


The Perseids

by thankgodforpandas



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minor Character Death, Unrequited Love, side Adam/Shiro - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-01-12 17:00:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 31,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18450824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankgodforpandas/pseuds/thankgodforpandas
Summary: Perhaps Shiro's life should have gone to shit when the first Kaiju made landfall in San Fransisco.It does not. Not truly.No, his own defining world-ending reality-shifting moment happens when he meets Keith’s razor-sharp gaze, only softened by a shy, almost imperceptible quirk of his lips across the Conn-Pod.That's when Shiro's life truly goes to shit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Showing up six years late with a pacific rim AU. Enjoy.

 

 

Perhaps Shiro's life should have gone to shit when the first Kaiju made landfall in San Fransisco.

Perhaps it would have made more sense: he would have been just one among many—impossibly many—staring in shock at his television while their world is scrapped and reborn, more dangerous and corrosive like Kaiju blue.

Yes, it would make sense but it would be a lie. At least a partial one. The breach certainly didn't improve Shiro's life. Too much pain, destruction and death. But the breach also gave him a purpose. It cemented his will to fight. He was among the firsts to volunteer for the Jaeger program, fresh from the glowing ashes of his past, blazing with righteous fury.

But no, his own defining world-ending reality-shifting moment does not happen as he watches live feed of the Kaiju dragging the Golden Gate bridge behind him like a spider web. No, it happens as he straps himself to the right combat frame of Galaxy Atlas and across from him, he meets Keith’s razor-sharp gaze, only softened by a shy, almost imperceptible quirk of his lips.

That's when Shiro's life truly goes to shit.  
  


 

 

 

 

The CAT-III is nothing special as far as Kaiju go: heavy-handed but slow, without any ranged attacks that can truly incapacitate them. Galaxy Atlas is strong enough to kick the monstrosity's ass in ten minutes, fifteen if they tried to make it last and enjoy a bit of fun. They've been n this cockpit a hundred times—even more—by now. This should have been over minutes ago. But here they are—losing another step as the CAT-III pummels them within an inch of their structural integrity.

Shiro grits his teeth and raises his left arm to deflect the meaty paw that tries to grapple them. It barely moves—it's like his entire body is under water—too slow, too heavy. They're losing—they're losing bad. The neural bridge fizzles at the edge of his consciousness. Black corners creep into the space where they've created the drift, shadowed tendrils lapping at the bright sphere of light that fuels their neural bridge. If it goes dark, it's all over. Shiro pushes again them, fighting to refocus—the images flash through his mind in quick succession: two boys huddled over books in a darkened library; their bodies entwined under the sheets, warm and soft; their laughter as they wave to the masses, acclaiming their _victory—_ the bond surges between them, stronger, viable, just as the Kaiju bites on Atlas' shoulder and drags them down. If they fall, they're done. There's no getting up from under a Kaiju.

If he can just reach the plasma blade—

“You know that never works on them!” he hears to his left. “We need to disengage!”

“We can take it,” Shiro grunts and pushes forward, forcing his right hand to grab the hilt of the blade.

“Neural handshake slowing down!” Matt yells over the comms. “What are you guys doing? Follow the beat!”

Shiro is strong and, even if the shatterdome requires strength and endurance, he knows he's among the rangers who take the requirement the most seriously. He knows he overdoes it even—Shiro would manage to benchpress a whale with his bare hands before Atlas finally reaches for the hilt of the plasma sword. Hard to make eight thousands tons of metal and nuclear power move when half of your brain wants them to move the other way. When you lose the beat,it's easier just curl up and die.

Their screens go dark as the CAT-III drags Galaxy Atlas into the depth of the pacific ocean. The vision of death and darkness is replaced by simple words in block letters.

_ROBEAST 4.2—SIMULATION: FAILED._

The lights flicker back on and the rush of engineers flooding the room to check on the simulator's specification drown out the sound of waves and screams in his ears.

Beside him, Adam stumbles out of the combat frame and tears the helmet from his head. Without his glasses, there's nothing to warm the cold hues of his eyes, like two slabs of stone.

“What the hell, Takashi?”

  


  


  


  


Adam says nothing during the medical checkup, then nothing again but somehow _louder_ during the debriefing. He sits ramrod straight next to Shiro while Matt rambles on the analytics of the simulation. He's a good actor, keeping his tone bored and monotone through each chart that painfully describes their failure. It will be enough to fool some of the brass, those who are here only because of seniority and had expected a cushy job pushing pencils before the world went to shit.

It's not enough to fool him: the small pauses he makes as he reads one dismal result of their beat after the other is only too revealing. It won't fool Sanda either. Although she's not there, the Admiral won't miss a drop of the debriefing: across the table, some ensign—Curtis he thinks his name is—is taking furious notes that will go straight to her. His fingers jam loudly against the keys of his computer, each click making Shiro want to punch him in the face a little bit more. He looks away. There's no point in hating the messenger. He's just doing his job. But Shiro is grateful that Iverson and Sam were not here to witness another one of their failures.

Shiro drags his attention back on Matt as he presents the last slide of the debriefing and uncovers the only number that really matters.

The beat.

There's only one thing to understand about the beat: just like the Richter scale or decibels , the Bilateral Efficiency Attainment Target, the B.E.A.T is not linear. Toddlers can achieve a 40% efficiency if you strap them to the combat frames and wait long enough for their cries to synchronize. Most cadets can probably achieve a 65% with their classmates, 75% if they like each other well-enough. But above that, the scale gets tricky. When Shiro first drifted with Adam, they hit 87% and newspapers around the world made it their headlines. Atlas seemed to fly as they took the Jaeger through the San Fransisco bay for training exercises. They killed their first Kaiju in twelve minutes. The world talked about them for month like nothing could ever distract them from that impossible feat until Allura and Lotor drifted in their Mark-III and hit 89%. Sure, they had a better software and a better Jaeger with literal months of over hours worth of updates by underpaid engineers to back their performance, but that was a two percentage points increase—it was insane, it was miraculous. At their best, Atlas could have pulled apart the golden gate and used it as a jumping rope, but now—

81%.

It's tolerable. Barely.

He's not the only to think the same, deep frowns marring the faces of each man and woman sitting at the table, but Matt knows how to read a room.

“As you know, Colleen—” Matt stops to clear his throat. “As you know combat-oriented large-scale experimental neurology—I mean combat-oriented large-scale experimental _and_ empirical neurology is still a vastly unexplored field.”

Shiro can't help but smile a little. The _empirical_ had been a bit of an overkill, but the Holts had been too afraid that people would mess up the acronym and mispronounce what was a homage to their mother, left safe but alone in a large New England home.

“Berkeley is long gone, Matt,” Adam snaps. “We don't need a lecture, we need to know why your simulations are sending us to the bottom of the fucking ocean.”

“Perhaps you should try to remember Berkeley and stop sounding like a random GI, Adam,” Matt snaps back. “You know what my father—”

“Matt, Adam, please,” Shiro says, voice like a whip. He turns to Matt. “What can we do?”

The meeting concludes with a set of exercises, _homework_ , and they are finally dismissed with stern commands to do better.

They've been told exactly that for weeks now. _Do better._

He hovers at Adam's side while everyone files out the conference room, carrying with them their hushed conversations. Shiro catches a few words: disaster. Replacement. It's not hard to fill in the blanks at all. Beside him, Adam is still as a statue.

He squeezes Adam's hand gently. “It's going to be ok.”

“Of course, it is,” Adam snaps, staring down the scratched metal top of the conference table. “What we need is to work harder. This is just science. We can make it work if we can just find where we're going wrong and _fix_ it. Come on, we've got work to do.”

Any other day, Shiro would have nodded and followed him. Any other day, maybe, but somehow, the exhaustion tips the scales over. His head is pounding with the effort of the drift and keeping a smile on his face through routine humiliation. He can't. He's had enough. He wants something something simple, something sweet—

“I think I'll head down to the kwoon room,” Shiro finds himself saying. “You know the cadets are having their last test.” Adam stills in the doorway. “Wanna come with?” Shiro tries, because he has to, but Adam slowly shakes his head, eyes heavy with intent. Shame washes over Shiro, the sting of it almost like physical pain, but it's not enough to sway him. Somehow it's not enough. Shiro stands firm, and Adam shrugs and walks away.

  


  


  


The kwoon room is uncomfortably warm and heavy with the stale smell of too many bodies packed in the same, small space for too long. He hears the unmistakable sounds of a fight—wacks of wood against wood and grunts of exertion—but he can't see the mat even with the advantage of his height, the view blocked by an eager audience. He sees Allura though, waving to him from the back of the room, standing on stacked crates of equipment.

He pushes his way to her—not an easy feat. He has to squeeze through the crush of what feels like half of the shatterdome and reaching her just as Sam calls the fourth strike: the end of the bout. There's room to breath there, probably because she's by her co-pilot and no-one in the shatterdome has the guts to stand too close to Lotor.

“Good timing, Shirogane,” Lotor says. “Your boy is about to start his last fight.”

Shiro lets the comment pass. He knows better. Instead, he bends down to kiss Allura's cheek.

“He has won everything so far,” Allura says against his ear.

_Of course he has,_ Shiro thinks, proud even if he shouldn't be. Winning doesn't bode well. It's not about winning anymore at this stage, it's about finding your match.

He strains his neck towards the mat just as Sam calls the next bout and Keith steps into the mat. He looks good, as if he was born to hold the staff loosely between his hands, bare feet padding towards the center of the ring with quiet grace. A beat later, Lance steps forward to face him, muttering something under his breath that has Keith grinning wide and hungry.

_Focus. Be patient,_ Shiro wishes he could tell Keith because Lance is the closest thing to a match that he has. This is it, the fight that truly counts. He holds his breath as Sam recites the rules though everybody in the kwoon room knows them better than their own name.

Sam nods. “Begin.”

“Come on, flyboy,” Lance taunts.

“You got it,” Keith throws back and dives towards Lance, head first, leaving his entire body exposed. That's the kind of reckless moves Shiro has tried to purge out of Keith's arsenal for months. It's barely reasonable in the training room, but in a Jaeger, it's instant death. Shiro huffs. Of course, that would be Keith's first move. What's worse is that Lance is not fast enough to take advantage of the blatant opening and has to scramble backward to defend himself from Keith's forward push. Push and pull, that's the way it's always been between them, and well, watching them fight and challenge each other, it looks—well, it looks fun. Shiro almost feels envious—envy that turns into admiration as Keith lands the first strike, twisting his body to avoid one of Lance's overhead strike while reaching forward, elongating his side and his arm to deal an impossible-looking backhand.

Behind him, Lotor lets out a low, appreciative whistle.

“Don't waste my time, lover boy,” Keith taunts back just as Lance grits his teeth and dives towards him for the next pass.

The second strike is almost as beautiful as the first one: a perfect faint as Keith telegraphs a fake dash to the right. A beautiful trap, Lance dives right into it, rushing straight towards Keith's waiting staff.

The crowd rumbles with enthusiasm, followed by a few scattered claps.

“Think you can do better?” Keith says as he pulls back. Lance looks both pissed off and impressed. He's not a fool. He understands Keith is playing with him. And it's hard not to commiserate with Lance, because he's good. He may have average skills compared to most of the cadets, but he has heart, confidence, and frankly true strikes of genius that have made him a valuable asset to the shatterdome. But he's not as good as Keith. It's an unfair fight: Keith, with his unique bundle of speed, dexterity and instinct, has the clear, overwhelming advantage.

The crowd admires Keith, but they root for Lance. They can relate to Lance's warmth and his showiness. In contrast, Keith shows only harshness and they mistake it for coldness, for mean-spiritedness.

They do not know him, so they cheer as Lance somehow manages to force Keith on his back foot and drop his defense, and his staff finds his way to Keith's throat. The first strike for him.

“Like that?” Lance smirks.

Keith's expression shifts and Shiro braces himself because Lance, even if he's good, he's no match against Keith, when Keith forgets that this is not about winning.

The next two strikes fall in such rapid succession that Sam trips over his words to call the end the match.

“Goddammit, Cadet!” Iverson roars as Lance hits the mat. “This is not a fight!”

“Could have fooled me,” Keith mutters—too loud, way too loud. Barely muffled snickers across the packed kwoon room, and Iverson bristles even as Keith extends a hand towards Lance and helps him to his feet.

It seems like nothing, but Shiro knows that one year ago Keith would have followed Lance to the ground and applied his staff across Lance's throat until he couldn't breath. He knows that six months ago, Keith would have watched Lance struggle to his feet and smirked. That gesture is progress, weeks and months of work, and Shiro is bursting with pride. He knows how much it has cost Keith, how much he's grown to allow himself that simple gesture. No-one understands what it truly means as Keith taps twice on Lance's shoulder and smirks in response to whatever scathing insult Lance offers under his breath.

Shiro knows that it is only the only thing that saves him for a very public, very virulent dress down. Even now, Iverson's jaw works to bite back his disapproval.

“That's enough for today, Kogane,” Iverson says, trying for a stern tone that ends up being closer to outright shouting. “You've entertained us thoroughly.”

Keith's staff thunks sharply in the mat and silence falls across the Kwoon room in an instant. Not an exhale or a whisper as Keith looks up towards the row of instructors, zooming on Iverson. There's history between them. Despite all of Keith's progress, it hangs heavy on all of Iverson's assessments. Keith's temper is something of a legend in the shatterdome, and entertainment has been scarce. One year ago, they would not have been disappointed: Keith would already have started screaming. Six months ago, it could have gone either way, as easy as the flip of a coin. Now, though, Shiro has no doubts. He smiles as Keith nods once to Iverson and retreats, the sea of spectators parting to let him through seamlessly, as if someone would try and stop him.

He doesn't seem to realize that no-one would dare.

“He has incredible instincts. A true killer,” Lotor says mildly. “Such a shame that nobody will ever be able to drift with him. Such a shame.”

“Hush,” Allura says. “Keith has potential.”

Lotor laughs. “Darling, please. That boy will never see the inside of a Jaeger.”

Shiro knows better to comment on anything that Lotor says and yet—he turns around, wishing he could wipe the smirk off Lotor's face with his fist. “Just watch him.”

  


  


  


He finds Keith sitting against the wall in the back of the kwoon room, head covered by a towel. Carefully, he slides down to the ground next to him and leans to the side until their shoulders bump together.

“You came,” Keith says.

“Of course I did,” Shiro smiles back and pushes a water bottle into Keith's hand. “It was a good fight.”

Keith accepts it thanklessly, drawing long gulps from it. “Haven't you listened to Iverson? It's not a fight.”

He looks away, but it doesn't quite conceal the bitterness seeping through each word. Keith never tries to conceal the simplest of emotions. He never has.

“I know,” Shiro says. “It should be a dance.”

The last fight of the evening has already started. Under the lights, Lance is struggling against Pidge. She's truly Matt's sister. Her fighting style is all analysis and probabilities. It clashes awkwardly with Lance's bravado and instinct. It's not hard to guess how the pilots for the next generation of Jaegers would be paired off. Pidge and Hunk are the most obvious combination: their fondness for reason and carefulness make them the easy choice. Inside a Jaeger, they'll be cautious to the point of tears, but efficient, _reliable_. The second choice is trickier because the instructors had meant to pair Keith and Lance. Both hotheads, both driven to attack rather than defend. But none of the instructors could have anticipated Keith's intensity, the sheer doggedness of his will. Keith fights to win. _Keith fights to survive._ It makes him too intense, too wild, impossible to predict. Even now, they see it as a liability. The odd one. The wild card.

They're all idiots.

The brass won't expel him despite Iverson's recommendations. Not yet. They've sunk too much money into each cadet to give up so easily, but Shiro will be damned if he does not remind them of Keith's potential.

“There are many ways to dance,” Shiro says as Pidge flattens Lance to the mat and Sam calls the final count. 4-0. A complete wipe-out.

Keith scoffs. “Not according to the garrison's handbook.”

“Since when do we care about the garrison's handbook?” Shiro smiles. The evening is coming to a close. The audience clumps together, gossiping over the fights, while Iverson compare notes with Sam. Shiro takes a breath. Now or never. He reaches out, but he misjudges the distance between them. Instead of his shoulder, his hand ends up curling around Keith's neck, sinking into his hair. “Let's show them how it's done.”

He squeezes Keith's neck once before he pushes himself off the floor, ignoring the strain in his muscles, the headache and the weariness that never quite seems to fade. This is now. This is important.

“Sam!” Shiro calls. His voice carries across the kwoon room too easily and the cadets turn to him like flowers seeking the sun. Keith's temper is a legend in the shatterdome. Shiro is a legend all on his own. “Can I interest you in one more spar?”

“Ranger,” Iverson says, the perpetual frown across his forehead twitching ever so slightly. “The session has been concluded.”

Pidge and Lance relinquish their staff without protest. He throws one behind him without looking and does not wait for the sound of impact. If anything, the silence deepens, the quality of it shifting from impatient to thick, ready for blood. Iverson's gaze wanders over Shiro's shoulder.

“Off the books, Sir, of course,” Shiro smiles. “Just need a ref. What do you say, Sam?”

Sam is not brass. Sam is a scientist. He knows how to maximize the efficiency of his godlike creations: with the best, not with those who comply.

“Off the books,” Sam says and puts the datapad down. “Four strikes marks a win.”

Shiro turns around. Keith holds the staff loosely in his hands, a bit puzzled, but mostly hungry and ready for violence.

His mouth moves without sounds. _You want some too?_

“You heard the man,” Shiro says and lunges forward, swinging for Keith's exposed neck. He would have scored the first strike against anyone else, but Keith ducks beneath the swinging staff, bringing his own staff towards Shiro's stomach, forcing him into a clumsy retreat.

_Oh, it's on,_ he thinks as he meets Keith's grin with one of his own.

Four strikes in, the score is at a stalemate—2-2—and Shiro forgets why he even challenged Keith in the first place. Sweat drips into his eyes. He doesn't even consider sweeping it away. It would give his opponent too much of a way past his guard. He knows that Keith is considering the exact same thing as he lets one heavy bang of his dark hair obscure part of his vision.

“Watch your footwork, buddy,” he whispers as he trips Keith and forces him to his knees.

Keith's only answer is to bare his teeth, then it's just a blur of motion and without quite understanding how, Shiro finds him flipped over. He lands hard on the mat, the sight of Keith's grin swimming in front of his eyes.

“Watch your left, ranger,” Keith whispers back.

“3-3,” Sam calls. It's barely audible above the excited whispers of the crowd. Shiro laughs as he pushes himself to his feet. “Next strike is the winner.”

They dive against each other again, exchanging blows again and again, but the strike blow doesn't fall. They're dragging it out. Keith doesn't move forward when Shiro exposes his side in a reckless attack. In return, Shiro lets Keith draw back when he falls for one of Shiro's feint. They both know it because there's no point in winning the last strike—because it's _fun._ He doesn't think about the breach, about the abysmal results of his drift, about the constant fear of failing and not being enough. Instead, he pushes himself to the edge, chasing after Keith and thinking five moves ahead because Keith anticipates all of them. He pushes forward, again and again, and Keith does not falter, matching his intensity as if he has endless pools of energy to his disposal.

Time slows. One pass after another, each of them even more perfect that the last.

It's amazing.

But his muscles are already burning and each breath scraps the back of his throat like scalding liquid. He knows his limits—he needs to end this before someone gets hurt. His grip is already slippery, another pass and he won't be able to control his hits.

Gritting his teeth, he uses every trick in the book until he sees an opening and takes it, pushing forward until the tip of his staff is nudged against Keith's throat, a perfect incapacitating blow if he were to press down. He smiles, waiting for Sam's call, before he sees the answering smile spread across Keith's face. Only then he finally registers the menacing edge of Keith's staff, an inch over his temple.

“4-4,” Sam calls after a beat. “It's a draw.”

The crowd erupts in cheers and tension leeches out of Shiro.

“That was amazing,” he breathes out, falling forward to clasp Keith's shoulder. Beneath sweaty bangs, Keith looks up at him and smiles with more teeth than is probably necessary. Helplessly, Shiro grins back.

“Show's over!” Iverson barks, his jaw locked in a vice. “Cadets, clean up this mess.”

  


  


  


Shiro tries to help, but Keith takes the staff from his hand before he can even think of putting it away himself. Instead, he goes for the chaos of crates and stools left by the audience, but Pidge and Hunk usher him away as soon as he reaches for one. He finds himself empty-handed, hanging back awkwardly, as the cadets busy themselves with the lowly task of clearing up the room around him.

He should go back to his quarters. The rush of pleasure and excitement of the fight slowly fades away, leaving behind only the initial headache and low-grade anxiety of the simulation. They would understand if he begged off.

He stays and ends up sitting back against a crate watching the four cadets work. In one corner, Pidge and Hunk work efficiently, discussing the mistakes of their spars and then weirdly what they want to eat on their next leave. Tacos or BBQ. It's a heated discussion, but through it, their bond shines, already strong, simple and fluid. It stands in sharp contrast with the bickering of Lance and Keith across the room, where they're turning sweeping the combat mats into a competition. Shiro is not surprised. Those two turn everything into a competition. What gives him pause is the new, companionable tone to their ribbing. After months of training, they ended up friends, probably despite their best efforts. Shiro smiles. There's hope still for the drift.

He must doze off at some point. When he blinks again, the room is silent and Keith is hovering over him, a hand heavy on his shoulder and narrowed, suspicious eyes locked on his face.

“You look like shit,” Keith says. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I had lunch,” Shiro shrugs. It might have been yesterday's lunch though. Maybe.

“Sure you did,” says Keith and grabs his arm. “Come on. We're getting you some food.”

Shiro contemplates saying no and pulling back as he stares at the back of Keith's head. It doesn't last for long. He follows docilely through the corridors of the shatterdome, eyes fixed on the hair that curls at the back of Keith's neck. It's getting long again. He'll have to bully him into a haircut soon.

The mess hall is uncommonly quiet as Keith manhandles him into sitting at a small corner table.

“Wait here,” Keith says and abandons him, probably to scavenge whatever food is available at the hour. Rush hour is long gone, but although the mess hall quiet, it is not deserted. there are only a few stragglers left, pouring over datapads and books, a few couples, who are taking advantage of the semblance of privacy to exchange quiet words, and a group of cadets, boys and girls, who are all staring at him.

He forces a nod and a smile, wincing as the group erupts in muffled squealed and too-loud whispers.

“It's the wonder drifter”, he hears to his quiet despair.

He looks down, glaring at the smooth metal of the laminated table, wishing for something to occupy his hands: a datapad, a staff, _anything_. How he hates that nickname. _The boy who can drift with anyone,_ the newspapers had titled months after they'd gotten their hands on leaked documents of Shiro's trial drifts, showing only successes across all partners and all drift softwares. _Shiro the Hero, the wonder drifter,_ they'd titled in block letters when Galaxy Atlas had faced its first Kaiju and walked away. He hates those nicknames more than anything.

“Go say hi,” he hears and a chair rattles a second later among excited laughs and whooping sounds.

Shiro prepares his smile because these things are important than what he thinks. He's more than a person here. He's a Jaeger pilot. He is the stand-in for resistance and hope. He doesn't hate it generally. He shakes hands and gives encouraging smiles easily enough. But today—perhaps today, his smile would have too many sharp edges, his words would be too short and cutting. He braces himself but the interruption doesn't come even as he looks up, smile at the ready, because Keith is suddenly here, arms full with two trays of food, staring down the cadet until the boy slowly, carefully sits back down.

His smile grows fonder, meeker, as Keith huffs and sits down next to Shiro, pushing a tray towards him. The sight of it derails any other thought: mac and cheese. A doubling serving by the looks of his overflowing plate. It's even _warm._

“Where did you find this?” Shiro asks in wonder.

Keith shrugs, already inhaling his own food like breathing's optional, and the smell is too compelling: a bite-in, Shiro realizes he's starving and instinct takes over, the span of his attention reducing to the distance between the plate and his mouth.

“Better?” Keith smirks, head resting on his hand, when Shiro finally looks up from his wiped-clean plate.

He sits back on the bench with a satisfied groan. “Thanks. You didn't have to.”

“Thanks for the spar,” Keith counters with a pointed look. “You didn't have to make me look good in front of Iverson.”

_You don't have to thank me,_ is what he almost says, but he sees the warning glint in Keith's eyes. _Then you don't have to thank me,_ is what Keith would answer, ready to pick up the gauntlet and talk into circles for hours. Shiro smiles and says nothing.

The mess hall is even quieter now. The cadets are gone. Well, most of the patrons are gone. There's only two lovers left, and they've moved their encounter well past conversation.

Shiro looks away.

It's late. The food has left him warm and weary, like he could fall asleep sitting there at the table. Keith must feel the same because he lies down on the bench, staring up at the ceiling. The final selection begins next week, and Shiro remembers the pressure and the stress in the days leading to that one chance of being chosen as a Jaeger pilot. Keith needs his rest.

He should say goodbye.

“We've been getting shit sim scores again,” is what he says instead.

Keith grunts from the bench. From the other side of the table, Shiro can't see his face anymore. Probably why he's even managed to get those words out.

“Lost the beat?”

“Yeah,” Shiro shrugs, looking down at his empty plate. “It's like we can't even hear the music anymore.”

Keith straightens up, eyes serious. “Is it—” he breaks off, his hand making a vague gesture over his temple.

Brain damage. The first cause of death among Jaeger pilots, far above Kaiju.

“No, nothing like that. At least nothing the medical staff could find,” Shiro says and Keith's shoulder relax minutely. “It's getting harder to stay in the drift. I've tried to make it better. I've tried so hard.”

Nothing is working. For months now. Despite Sam, testing for all possible causes of neurological misalignment. Despite endless training sessions in the kwoon room, honing his mind and his body. Despite sex, bringing his body as close as it can be to his partner's.

“I don't know how to fix it,” Shiro admits.

“Maybe you can't fix it,” Keith says, blunt as a hammer, and the comment is like a slap, unexpected and painful. He looks up, but Keith is not looking at him. “What I mean is—“ Keith says, voice rough. “It takes two to tango. You're not alone in the drift. Why would you try to fix it on your own?”

He stands up abruptly and Shiro tries to follows the motion, craning his neck.

“You should talk to Adam,” Keith says. “I'll see you around, Shiro. Thanks for the spar,” he adds and walks away.

  


  


  


  


Adam is already in bed, half-slumped against the metallic headboard when Shiro makes it back to their shared room. He's completely absorbed, the white light of his datapad reflecting against his glasses. Shiro knows better than to disturb him immediately. He goes straight for their shower—a luxury reserved especially for the pilots who'll die sooner rather than later. He's quick about it because a private shower does not guarantee hot water. When he comes out, Adam is still curled over his reading and he's tempted to just roll his bed and call it a night rather than try and coax Adam's out of focus, but Keith's words echo in his ears. _You should talk to Adam._ So instead, he sits besides Adam and curls his fingers around his ankle beneath the covers.

“The cadets have progressed so much,” Shiro tries softly. “I wish you could have seen them. Pidge and Hunk are a sure thing. I think Sanda will assign them as the back-up for Altea immediately.” Shiro pauses and is rewarded with a noncommittal hum, although Adam's eyes remain glued to his screen, his brow furrowed in concentration. Still, it's progress. “I worry for the other pair though,” Shiro soldiers on. “Something has changed between Keith and Lance, I think there's hope for the drift, but they need time.”

“Selection begins next Monday. You know that,” comes Adam's soft comment.

“I know,” Shiro nods. “But really you should have seen Keith. He's unstoppable with a staff, just think what he could do inside of a Jaeger.” It's a familiar rant, but it still gets his heart pumping with outrage no matter how many times he goes through it. “I don't understand why the brass just won't encourage him. He has killer instincts and better potential for drifting than any of us combined,” Shiro ticks off with his fingers. “His mind is like—water or steel. And he cares _._ ” That's what makes all the difference. That's what made Shiro go back to that little quaint house in downtown LA and refuse to take no for an answer. He knows how much Keith cares, to make a difference, to protect what is worth fighting for even if it means putting himself into reckless danger. “He's not some military puppet, he _cares_ and he could make a real difference.”

“If you like the kid so much, you should stop pushing him so hard,” Adam snaps. “Save him from the gruesome death by Kaiju or just plain radiation poisoning.”

He regrets it as soon as he says it. It's obvious as he cringes and looks away.

“Sorry,” Adam mutters. “I'm sorry—I don't know why I said that.”

Adam discards his datapad and lies down, his back turned to Shiro.

“Hey, are you alright?” Shiro asks and puts a hand on Adam's arm. Six months ago, he would have turned and fallen into Shiro's arms, but six months ago, their neural handshake had just broken all records and they'd been giddy with victory. Indestructible. Today, Adam's muscles tense under his palm and Shiro bites on the inside of his cheek, considering his words carefully. “I know that our drift has been shaky lately, but it's just a bump in the road. We'll figure it out. After all, we're a team, aren't we?”

Shiro should drag Adam towards him. He knows how Adam tends to lose himself in his thoughts, how touch is the most direct way to get him out of them, but his hand is like lead. The silence stretches between them—unexpected, interminable.

“We're a team,” Adam finally whispers, reaching blindly to squeeze Shiro's fingers. It's not quite enough to soothe whatever mark Adam's hesitation has left on his mind.

  


  


  


With selection week, the shatterdome buzzes with excitement.

In the eye of the public, Jaeger pilots' lives are 100% adrenaline and danger and fighting impossible odds as they stand tall in front of monsters and vow to protect millions of human lives. And the public is right because they should only think of Jaeger pilots when there's dilation in the breach, when the whole world slows down to the slow trickle to updates from the shatterdomes and holds its breath. But it's only one side of the story. The world stops when the shatterdomes roar to life with the deafening noise of the Kaiju alarm. But in the aftermath, the world licks its wounds and picks up the pace, while shatterdomes slink back into the background and into impossible boredom. For every day where they ready themselves to punch death in the face, there are a dozen, a hundred days of utter, soul-shattering boredom—so many, _many_ bleak days of nothingness, ensconced between four metal walls with no natural light.

Selection week is like _christmas_ for the people of the shatterdome.

On day 2, everybody who is anybody has squeezed into LOCCENT—Allura and Lotor off to the right side, Sam and Iverson already bickering across Sanda's empty seat at the forefront of the command panel—Shiro is thankful for his bulk as he forges a way for Adam and himself to Matt's side.

“How's Pidge?” Shiro asks.

“Better. She even managed to keep her breakfast down this morning,” Matt smirks, but his voice is proud. Day 1 has been a resounding success. Pidge and Hunk managed to establish a neural bridge. Not great. Well-below the beat of the current pairs of active pilots, but strong. They found each other and locked together like peas in a pod. Their bond held like a dam, barely fluctuating. Even the Admiral had given a half-nod, looking pleased. These are pilots she'll be able to use. They'll provide a good line of defense in a Mark-III, an almost impenetrable one in an appropriate Mark-IV.

A success by any other name.

Day 1 has left everyone exhilarated and it bleeds into day 2: even as Admiral Sanda finally takes her seat, the excited conversations take a while to die down. Shiro sees her instantly though and whatever Matt and Adam are talking about fades away and all the remains is the unbearable pulse of his heart, almost as if he were a cadet again, as if he were to the one about to try and prove his worth as a Jaeger pilot.

“McClain! Kogane! You're up!” Iverson barks out as soon as Sanda gives him a subtle nod and Shiro leans forward, trying to get a better look of the closest monitor.

Keith enters the Conn-Pod first. The suit looks good on him, hugging the sharp angles of his body and highlighting the lean lines of his muscles. Some people might still call him skinny, but Shiro knows the hidden strength in Keith's limbs and how he can take on two, five men, and come up on top, barely breathing hard, as if he'd taken a simple jog along the ocean. But he moves like he's forgotten his own strength: like a thief through the Conn-Pod, bolting to the left hemisphere combat frame, Adam's usual seat, head firmly turned to the floor.

Lance follows a beat later, moving with a deliberate strut, mindful of his audience even if he can't see it. As he settles in the combat frame, he throws a heavy look to the surveillance camera mounted into the wall. He must have rehearsed it. The way he lifts a single eyebrow just as he glances directly at the camera—too perfect. Across the room, Allura rolls her eyes, her eyebrow twitching with annoyance. Definitely rehearsed, but the techies have no patience for it and manhandle Lance into the combat frame.

“Pilot-to-pilot connection protocol sequence,” the smooth disembodied voice calls as soon as the two pilots are bolted to the places and Shiro holds his breath—although he knows the process intimately, it feels rushed, almost cold. “Neural interface drift: initiated.”

It's always strange to see it happen to someone else. From the outside, the process seems almost effortless. The pilots grow still. Their breathing goes deep and almost peaceful. Their fluttering eyelids, the only sign of what they're truly going is, is hidden behind their helmet. But Shiro knows how painful it is to dive into somebody's else consciousness, the endless streams of images and information crumbling over you like an avalanche. Each time, it's almost too much too endure. It's broken many promising recruits who had entered the Conn-Pod confidently and left it on a stretcher. It's too much to endure for most, but then, Keith is the strongest person he knows.

“Right hemisphere: calibrating,” the central command's voice calls. Then a second later: “Left hemisphere: calibrating.”

Silence falls in LOCCENT.

“Come on,” Shiro whispers and keeps his eyes fixed on Keith's form. “Keith, come—”

“Pilot connection: failed,” the AI voice interrupts his plea. The cold, emotionless voice contrasts sharply with the shocked gasps and barely muffled whispers that spreads like fire within LOCCENT. “Jaeger activation: failed. Pilot to Jaeger connection: failed,” the AI rambles on, barely audible over the growing chaos.

“As predicted,” Iverson fake-whispers, and bends down at once to whisper into Sanda's ear. Sam follows a second after, half-shouting into her ear.

Shiro keeps his eyes peeled on this monitor, watching as Keith slumps in the combat frame. He'd seen him moving like thunder as he fought in the dark alleys of Los Angeles, but now he's bound to the floor, heavy shackles around his feet.

_You can do it, Keith,_ he thinks, but Keith doesn't move. He stays slumped over himself, his face looking down at the metal grid of Atlas's head.

“Sir! Admiral! We can go again! ” Lance's voice comes through the comms. “We can do it! Let us go again!”

“Enough,” Sanda snaps and stands, forcing Sam and Iverson to fall back. “I've seen enough,” she says, her voice like a death sentence. “Shut it down.”

Even if his fingers shake over his keyboard, Matt complies and the monitors go dark.

“Bring back the Holt girl. Perhaps we can at least salvage our investment in McClain,” Sanda says in the sudden darkness. “We'll pick up in two hours.”

And that's it— _shut it down—_ just three words that seal Keith's future. He's dismissed and disregarded based on less than a minute of evidence. Keith, brighter and stronger than all the cadets that have passed through the Jaeger program.

No.

No. It's unacceptable.

Shiro is moving before he even knows he wants to, following the admiral, a protest burning on the tip of his tongue, but a hand drags him back.

“Don't,” Adam says. “Whatever you're planning to do, it won't help.”

“You've seen his sim scores,” Shiro says because Adam can understand cold stats despite his gaping blindspot for Keith's brilliance. “51 drops and 51 kills in solo simulations. Top 5% speed on all them. Bottom 5% in casualties _and_ property damage. We can't let the brass drop him because he doesn't find the drift on the first try and Iverson doesn't like his _attitude_. He's the best.”

That's the wrong thing to say. He knows instantly with the way Adam's eyes narrow. “ _We_ are the best.”

_We were_ _the best_ , Shiro almost retorts. He barely keeps the words back, letting them burn on the tip of his tongue. Adam hears them anyway, the pressure on his arm almost painful for a beat before it's gone.

“Your choice, Takashi.”

  


  


  


Keith stays curled up on himself as Shiro enters the pilots' locker room. He's still in full gear, clutching his head. Well, almost in full gear. Shiro picks up the discarded helmet and dusts it off. The visor is dented, full of new scratches. Unfit for proper use now. The brass will take the cost of out Keith's wages for sure. Hopefully, no-one will make the connection to the bashed-in locker behind Keith. That would take even longer to pay off.

“Hey, buddy,” Shiro says softly. “How are you holding up?”

“I couldn't do it,” Keith bites out, his voice wrecked. “I'm sorry—I couldn't.”

Shiro leans back against the door. “What happened?”

Keith curls up even tighter on himself and that simple, unthinking gesture cements Shiro's intent just a bit more.

“I—I could feel Lance, waiting for me. All his thoughts, his experiences, his fucking _desires._ I could see and feel all of them. And he was pushing to get the same access to me and I can't do it,” Keith pauses. “I know you believed in me—but I can't drift,” his voice cracks. “I'm sorry, Shiro.”

“There's no need to apologize. You can't force a drift,” he says quietly. “Lance wasn't meant to be your copilot.”

“But that's it! Lance was it for me,” Keith cries out, his fingers digging into his hair. “They're going to expel me.”

“They are,” Shiro says, his voice calmer than it has any right to be. “But Lance was not your only option.”

He takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

“I'll do it.”

Keith's eyes go wide as he finally looks up and sees Shiro's get-up. It took him the better part of an hour to cajole the intendant into releasing his gear, then he had to promise her the entirety of his meager stash of sweetsbefore she helped him suit up.

“I'll drift with you. We'll show the brass that you're the best they can get.”

“What? No—” Keith stutters. “You can't—It might mess up your stats—Adam.”

“Adam knows,” Shiro half-lies. “Let me help you.”

“I can't,” Keith whispers.

“They'll expel you if you don't.”

Keith surges to his feet. “I know that! But I _can't._ ”

Shiro pushes himself from the door. “Why? he says, his voice gentle. “Are you afraid of what I'll see?”

A twitch in a muscle of his jaw is the only sign that betrays Keith's silence.

“There's no privacy in the drift. That's true,” Shiro says. “Everything you are is exposed to your co-pilot if you just reach for it. But you don't have to. Even if there's no privacy, there can be discipline. If you don't want me to look, then I won't.”

Keith looks up at him, searching his face for a long time. It's funny. Shiro often forgets the color of Keith's eyes. It always takes him by surprise when he sees that particular shade of blue and realizes his memory got it all wrong again.

“How do you think I managed to achieve so many drifts?” Shiro admits. “I don't go snooping around. I let my copilots hide what they want.”

There's more to it. He also hid so much from his copilots: the ugly parts of his soul, the broken pieces and deep-seated fears. But Keith doesn't need to know about the little boxes he keeps firmly locked in the darkened expanse of the drift. No-one does.

“We're friends, aren't we?” Shiro asks and squeezes Keith's shoulder. “You can trust me.”

Slowly, Keith's hand comes to rest on Shiro's. “I trust you.”

Shiro smiles. “Then come with me.”

  


  


  


  


Pidge takes one glance at them and gives a faint relieved whine. “Thank God. Anything to save me from drifting with Lance McClain.”

“I'm right next to you, Pidge,” Lance drawls, but he looks worried somehow, a frown marring his perfectly hydrated forehead. “What are you guys doing?”

“Making a point,” Shiro says. “Will you help us?”

Lance looks over to Keith. “Are you—” he doesn't finish his sentence, although it seems enough for Keith to understand.

“Yeah,” Keith says, rueful. “Wouldn't you?”

“Huh,” Lance says with a wince, but his expression softens with a soft smile that Shiro can't quite interpret. There's a whole discussion between them that Shiro is missing, but there's no time. LOCCENT is calling the beginning of the next run.

“You'll need this,” Lance sighs theatrically and pushes his helmet into Keith's hand.

“Thanks, lover boy,” Keith smiles and doesn't quite manage to avoid the smack of Lance's hand to the back of his head as they dive into Atlas's cockpit.

It's easy to exploit the first few minutes of confusion. The army of techies go through the motions of preparing for the drop without realizing that the pilots are not those who were announced. Probably they just don't care. They'll get paid whoever they strap to the frames.

Of course, Iverson is the first one to realize the mismatch.

“What the hell are you doing, Shirogane?” Iverson's voice echoes in the cockpit and the techies finally stop in their motion.

“Protecting your investment,” Shiro says. _Pulling your head out of your ass,_ is what he means.

“Ranger,” Sanda's voice cuts through. “Explain yourself.”

Keith stills besides him, half-strapped to the combat frame, because he might never have given a shit about Iverson, but the Admiral is another matter entirely.

“Let us go for a run,” Shiro pleads. “Just one dance. You won't regret it. Admiral, _please_.”

The silence stretches beyond unbearable. He can only imagine the ruckus in LOCCENT. Besides him, he's pretty sure Keith stopped breathing.

“One run,” Sanda says. “Do not waste my time.”

Across from him, he meets Keith’s razor-sharp gaze, only softened by a shy, almost imperceptible quirk of his lips. He keeps his gaze firmly fixed on Keith even as the last techie locks the heavy door of the cockpit behind her, and, heart already pounding, he calls: “Matt, roll it!”

“Pilot-to-pilot connection protocol sequence. Neural handshake: initiated,” the voice calls a second later.

Shiro braces himself, knowing that instinct will drive Keith forward. There is no getting used to that part, no way to truly be prepared for the intrusion of another human into a consciousness and absorb the sheer volume of information flooding his brain. Shiro smoothes his mind, knowing it will ease the drift, but the flood doesn't come. Keith leaves the drift wide-open. Shiro can feel his presence just out of arm's reach and pushes forward gingerly.

_I trust you._

Keith's memories take over him like a tidal wave. Some are short: the splintered wood of the single window-frame, Keith's fingers pulling them apart as he stares into the endless desert. The musty smell of his pillow as he stares into faint dots of light, wishing he could see the stars again, truly see them, but desperately grateful for this paltry, second-best. Others seem to stretch for hours: the warmth of his father's embrace, Romelle's sweet face as she winks at him across the dining table among shouts and cries and then—the silhouette of Shiro over him, thrown into fuzzy detail by the dirty lights of the city. Shiro, smiling down at Keith's guarded face. _Come with me,_ he'd said, arms tight around Keith's shoulder—not controlling or threatening, but warm and welcome.

It bleeds into a view of a hallway as Keith watches the entrance of the Conn-Pod like a hawk, desperate for the fleeting chance to give Shiro a small smile and a wave. His thoughts scream _don't die don't die don't die_ in unison with the Kaiju alarm. Then, the relief, the hopeless surge of love and devotion as Shiro reappears after a successful drop, the urge to step forward, to leave the shadows but something else stops him, something dark and shameful as he watches Shiro throw an arm around Adam's neck, leaning together—

_Don't._

Keith's voice echoes like a whip in the drift and Shiro stops. He's promised. Discipline. Patience. It's the only way to focus.

He pulls back and the stream of consciousness reverses.

The face of his mother flashes first, straight black hair framing soft features, her slanted eyes warm as she bends towards him. She's beautiful, and the thought doesn't come from him. It comes from Keith: a simple, honest feeling. It spreads warmth through Shiro's body, even as he lets the face of his mother fade away. He knows not to latch on, no matter how desperately he wants to. The memory of her face is never quite as clear in his mind than it is in the drift. But Shiro has never once chased the rabbit. He won't start now.

It's always the same sequence of memories. His mother's face, then the flashes of his childhood home, his desperate dash for the stars—studying charts and mapping constellations when he should have been in bed, applying overseas, sweating and crying over textbooks and computer programs—all rendered useless as the earth cracks in two.

He knows what comes next—the ashes of the aeronautics department, Berkeley burnt to ashes, Allura, Adam—fighting back and winning, finally winning. He's ready to pull them away to the neat boxes he has aligned in the back of his mind. Shiro would understand. It would be necessary, anything to protect the drift. But Keith watches it all without blinking, without judging, his mind eager and bright.

_He's beautiful._ The thought, _his_ thought, takes him by surprise and he buries it instinctively, just as the wave of memories dries up and Shiro stands in the drift, pure and simple. Keith is beside him, his whole-being like a beacon as he looks around the endless space of the drift, exhilaration and pride flowing between them like blood.

“Pilot connection: complete,” he hears as Keith turns to look at him, his razor-sharp eyes focused on him and nothing else. “Jaeger activation: complete. Pilot to Jaeger connection: complete.”

“We did it,” Keith beams.

Helplessly, he tries to match it.

“Galaxy Atlas,” Matt's voice says faintly. “Ready to dance.”

Shiro raises a hand. Atlas responds almost immediately, its massive arm moving up and down with each nudge of Shiro's mind, of their minds, because Keith is right there with him, woven in every breath he takes and every decision. Together, they settle Atlas's arms into a defensive position, arms raised, fingers curled up but relaxed. It's not Galaxy Atlas's preferred holding position. It's not even in the garrison's handbook.

“Since when do we care about the garrison's handbook,” Keith murmurs as Atlas mirrors that Shiro's has used in a dozen sparring session to taunt Keith to attack.

It takes a beat for Shiro to realize that he's laughing.

“Galaxy Atlas,” Sanda's voice cuts in. “Proceed with the run.”

“Yes, ma'am,” they call in unison, and together, they move Galaxy Atlas towards the opening doors of the shatterdome, slowly revealing the endless expanse of the pacific ocean.

  


  


  


Halfway through the run, Shiro forgets the right hemisphere is supposed to lead the Jaeger. Keith is relentless beside him as he takes Atlas's forms, his excitement, his pride and faith battering against Shiro's mind.

It should be unbearable.

It's not—somehow, it's warm. It's welcome.

Hand-to-hand combat. Weapons training. Keith follows through each step of the run without breaking a beat. Seamlessly.

Shiro lets himself be swept along Keith's enthusiasm. It's easy. He knows it's too easy, but he doesn't linger on those thoughts, relegating them to shadows of the drift, away from Keith.

The beat is strong between them.

“It's good,” Matt only says, when Shiro asks about it, his voice a faint whine.

They're called back just as the sun sets down on the bay, painting the sky with soft, calming hues of reds and pinks. It's beautiful, as if the world was not on the brink of destruction. As they walk back to the shatterdome, Shiro feels a slight resistance in their bond for the first time. Atlas's left foot drags against the ocean's floor, because Keith can't quite look away.

The doors of the shatterdome close behind them, engulfing them in artificial light.

“You'll see all of it again,” Shiro says and carefully brings two memories to the surface. First: the glittering waves under the stars as Galaxy Atlas stands his ground, taking solace in the few fleeting seconds of peace before the Kaiju breaks the edge of the water. Then: the rocky shoreline of California in all its glory as Galaxy Atlas makes his way back to the shatterdome, each step more painful than the last, but victorious.

Keith shies away from each of them, the bright edge of his consciousness curling on itself, away from Shiro's influence, and Shiro draws back to give him space.

It's harder than it should be.

“Initiating cool-down sequence,” Matt says over the comms. “Hang tight. We'll have you out of the drift in ten minutes.”

“Roger that,” Keith says.

His voice sounds resigned, almost defeated, but that's all that Shiro can decipher from it. It's followed by flashes of memories and emotions, but they're dragged instantly to the corners of the drift that Shiro is neatly avoiding. The shadows there grow with each passing moment, casting darkness over Keith's form.

Keith flinches as heavy shackles bolt Atlas to its hangar of the shatterdome.

“This is not the end,” Shiro says. “That was amazing. You were amazing.”

Keith flinches again, a full-body shudder, and there's a crack in the darkened corners of the drift. Light bursts through and it brings with it a new stream of memories: Keith watching as Shiro slings an arm around Adam as they stumble out of the Conn-pod, drunk on victory. Keith, curled up in his bunk, pressing his fists to his eyes, desperate and _ashamed,_ his body aching but unapologetic. Keith collapsing against the wall just days ago, seconds after he leaves Shiro's line of sight. _You should go talk to Adam,_ the words burn like acid in the back of his throat. He should go back and say what he truly means. _He doesn't deserve you. I would make you proud. I would not let you down._ But he can't. He won't because that's not what a friend does. He has to do what's right, even if it's never felt so hard.

All of it coalesces into a bone-deep ache, almost chronic, that Keith has learned to carry with him like a shield. Day after day, knowing it can only get worse—but it's just a shield. And suddenly, desperately, Shiro needs to know what it protects.

“Wait!” a voice calls, but Shiro ignores it.

He dives towards the shadows head first. He expects the new flashes of memories, but he's not ready for what he sees: his own body asleep and his head leaning against Keith's arm across the couch's armrest during karaoke night, sweat trailing down Shiro's throat after a spar, his chest rising up and down with the exertion, the cloth of his tank drawn tightly across his chest, the weight of his hand on Keith's shoulders, the unbearable warmth of it, and Shiro's mouth curled up in a smile, full and soft, at least he thinks it would be soft—Shiro watches it all without understanding as countless flashes tumble at the forefront of his mind, innocuous slices of life or deep conversations, revealing more than anticipated, all of them with him as the common denominator. All of them. He's at the forefront of all of them, expect one. He latches on to it, dragging himself until he sees Keith and Lance, arms around each other as they stumble through the darkened hallways of the shatterdome, drunk as skunks. Keith's face is loose from the alcohol, hiccuping and laughing while trying to speak.

“Look at us,” he snickers into Lance's shoulders. “Such a couple of losers.”

“Oi! Talk for yourself,” Lance slurs, trying to punch Keith's shoulder. he loses his balance, and Keith hauls him up, sparing him from a painful encounter with the floor. “I'm not giving up,” Lance continues. “I'mma... I'mma fight for her.” He looks up to Keith, eyes slightly unfocused. “You too, buddy, you too. Gonna fight for him?”

Something soft crosses Keith's face, but his expression, as it settles, is nothing but resigned, impossibly sad. “Nah. I'm not that greedy. What I got—” he says, and he looks away, towards the empty hallway, towards nothing in particular. “No—I'm already taking too much.”

Shiro follows Keith's gaze. In the memory, it's directly towards nothing, lost in the empty hallways, but in the drift, Keith looks straight into leagues and leagues of darkness, vast collections of moments and thoughts that Keith is keeping away from him.

There's so much there. So much—he doesn't think. He pushes and pushes until he stands in a stark room, soft with the low light of morning. It's the shack, halfway lost in the Arizona desert, but somehow cosy, quiet, and most importantly safe. The rational part of Shiro's mind knows that he's never set foot there, never even seen pictures of it, but the rest of his mind glosses the rational thought, because Shiro knows that shack. He knows the sounds of the floorboards under his feet. He knows the dull aches the bed, filled with uneven springs and little else, leaves in the morning. He knows how cramped and shitty the bathroom truly is. He knows how the air moves across the space and knows the smell of sand and sage that permeates the bedroom. His nostrils are full of their combined aroma even now.

Keith is sprawled across the bed, asleep. The air is already too hot for comfort, the summer heat relentless despite the weak sun of the early morning. It leaves a fine sheen of sweat across Keith's brow. He must have kicked the sheets off during the night. They're only really covering his lower back, exposing the strength of his legs and the well-sculpted muscles of his back. But it's not the unconscious, suddenly undeniable elegance of his half-naked body that catches Shiro's attention, it's his face, smudged into the pillow and half-obscured by his too long hair. Keith looks relaxed, at peace in a way that Shiro had thought could never be possible. Not with their world upturned and ablaze, confined to screeching metal and death.

This isn't a memory.

Shiro knows that Keith hasn't visited his childhood home for years now, knows it now as intimately as his own memories.

No, this isn't a memory. This isn't real.

The bedroom door opens with a creak, disturbing the quiet peace, and his own reflection pads softly into the room, chest bare and sweatpants hanging low on his hips. He moves slowly but confidently, his lips curving into a soft smile as he sees Keith's still form. He sits on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, and sets down a steaming cup on the bedside table, just as Keith's eyes open to slits.

“I made coffee,” come Shiro's low words as Keith rolls onto his back, stretching like he has no care in the world. It's artless, almost devastating—the sinews of his arms, the flat planes of his chest, the shadows of the sheet rumpled against his groin, revealing more than hiding—Shiro tears his gaze away like burned, but his counterpart has no such qualms, letting his eyes drag slowly along the lines of Keith's body—like he's welcome to, like it's his right. Shiro understands too late as the atmosphere shifts with a snap, going from innocent to loaded in the span of a breath. He's an intruder somehow, between a man who wears his face and his best friend who wears a face he's never seen. No—no, there's nothing unfamiliar about Keith's expression, even now. He's seen it has done a hundred times during spars and training exercises, it's the face he's seen across from him seconds before they established the neural connection: fire in his eyes but humor on his lips. Only this time, his reflexion doesn't react with his staff or dismisses Keith's eagerness with a laugh. This time—the wave of nausea hits him at all once as he watches the thin thread of his restraint snap and he leans over to kiss the smirk off Keith's mouth.

_Shiro!_

Keith laughs, swatting at Shiro's head. “Don't kiss my mouth. I'm gross.”

“Hm,” Shiro mutters as he shifts on the bed and presses a kiss to Keith's palm instead, then his wrist, leaving a red mark there like ownership before he latches onto Keith's neck. His hand moves down, dragging the sheet away, and Keith is laid bare in the morning sun, beautiful and hard, his cock curling against his stomach.

“Where then?” Shiro asks even as his hand moves down, forcing Keith's body to arch and shudder. When Shiro tries again to take his mouth in a deep kiss, there are no complaints.

_This isn't real_ , Shiro thinks as he watches himself lick into Keith's mouth like a man starved. The edges of the room grow fuzzy, the bed becomes the only focus as Shiro's vision narrows down to study each play of the light on Keith's skin, on each variation of his sighs, on the slick sounds of their mouths moving together.

“Take a guess,” Keith pants when they part, lips wet and red, but there's a grin on his mouth, a half-veiled challenge in his eyes.

_This isn't real,_ Shiro repeats as he watches himself settle down between Keith's legs and throw a last playful look before he takes Keith's cock in his mouth.

_Shiro, please don't!_

This isn't real.

It's a dream. It's a delusion that Keith has entertained late in his bunk as he reached down between his legs—something, _anything_ to release the tension. That's what he's thought of: himself moaning low as Shiro sinks down on his cock—a perfect slide—and his hands coming up to fist into Shiro's hair as his legs jerk around Shiro's head. It should be obscene. His friend—his best friend fucking his mouth, using him for pleasure and release, but no—it's not. It's the set-up he thought of desperately, alone in the showers at the crack of down when he can't sleep, when punching a dummy can't make him ignore the desperate longing that burns low in his gut.

It takes a moment for Shiro to realize that above the slick sounds of sex, the pants he hears are his own—his breathing is difficult, coming in short pants as he watches them, because it's more than bodies moving together towards release. It's yearning, and comfort, and _love._ Shiro takes a stumbling step forward. It's impossible to resist. He feels drunk, as if all he knows has been stripped away, replaced by euphoria. The scene narrows down further. On the bed and its rumpled sheets, the simple set-up of Keith's wishful thinking: a world where there's no war, where things are slow and simple and sweet, and Shiro is his.Because there's a ring. There's a ring on Keith's finger, the silver of it stark against Shiro's dark hair. A simple, understated band. Elegant. Perfect. And as Keith pushes upwards into Shiro's mouth—Shiro groaning around the stretch, his hands grasping Keith's ass, not holding him, but guiding him, setting the pace that suits them both—he sees the matching ring on his own finger.

_Shut it down! SHUT IT DOWN!_

No—no, he wants to see more, wants to see Keith's face as he comes from Shiro's mouth. He wants to see how Keith imagined the immediate aftermath. He wants to know if it ends like Shiro needs it to suddenly, desperately—pressing his weight into Keith's body, dragging out his own release with a few, hasty strokes as he pants against Keith's throat, coming against Keith's skin as strong arms curl around his shoulders, riding the high as he welcomes sloppy kisses against the corner of his mouth, hearing sweet things murmured close to his ear—sweet things that he can't hear. No—no, he wants to know. He wants to know. He pushes forward and clings to the soft image of Keith's face, looking at him like he's everything, like there's nothing else, pushing and pushing against the deafening pressure on his mind, but then he blinks and he's staring at the coil of wires and metal panels of the inside of Atlas' head.

There's perfect silence for a beat. Probably just a second, maybe two, before sounds come back to Shiro's ears, his body still reeling with the severed neural link. There are shouts in the comms—Matt's voice calling his name. His mouth opens to answer—but there's nothing in his lungs because he's not breathing. Ah—he has to breath. He doesn't know how long he struggles to remember how his lungs work, but when he finally manages to suck in a breath, it feels it's the first one he's taken in years. The space around him goes crystal-clear, the wiring in front of his eyes thrown in sharp relief, Matt's voice overlaid with the sounds of alarms and technical failures, and then, _then,_ the pained sounds of struggles as his copilot tries to free himself from the combat frame. His copilot—and he remembers, a flood of images invading his thoughts.

“Keith,” he pushes through a broken voice. Then louder, _louder_. “Keith, _Keith._ ”

He stops fighting against the iron shackles holding his feet abruptly, his breathing coming ragged through Shiro's open comms. The helmet's visor does nothing to hide Keith's wide, horrified expression, his mouth hanging open.

The hatch of the Conn-Pod opens and a small army of technicians invade the room, diving straight for them to release them from the combat frames, buzzing around them like an angry swarm of bees and they break his line of sight. He wants it back. He needs it back—so he cranes his neck forward to catch a glimpse of his copilot, pushing against the restraints on his feet.

They don't budge and he can only watch as Adam pushes past the technicians, diving straight for Keith. “What the hell did you do to him?”

“I didn't—” Keith pants out, his voice an octave too high. “He chased the rabbit.”

“That's bullshit!” Adam yells and hauls Keith the skin of his suit. “ _What did you do to him?_ ”

“Adam, stop—” he coughs on nothing, but his mind is full with the way Keith's cock stretched and filled his throat, and Shiro can't breathe again. “I chased the rabbit.”

Adam pauses, turning to Shiro, and Keith does too, his eyes wide and panicked, his cheeks stained with red as if he'd just—no. no.

Then it's just blur as the shackles finally pop free and Keith slips away from Adam's grasp, running straight out of the Conn-Pod.

  


  


  


  


The med staff flutter around him like nervous hens, poking and prodding with more instruments than he's ever seen or can think of parts of his body to use them on. Still, he's not one to tell them how to do their job. After all, their diligence might be warranted. Apparently, his heartbeat spiked so quickly towards the end of the drift that they feared cardiac arrest. Also, he might also have stopped breathing entirely towards the very, very end.

But that's only one interpretation. The other, more cynic, more _realistic,_ explanation is that the med staff definitely want to look busy when the entire brass has stuffed itself into the small med bay, watching Shiro like hawks. Or for Iverson's case, glaring at the bed meant for his copilot like it personally insulted his family, three generations back.

It's empty. Unbearably so.

He'd hoped for a moment of peace before the debriefing. A moment to gather his thoughts and breathe. No such luck.

“Look at your beautiful nerd,” Matt mutters and shoves a datapad under Shiro's nose.

Their N.E.R.D., or their neural efficiency returns and dynamics, is undeniably beautiful, all smooth trend and co-moving neural impulses. It seems almost like something straight of a computer simulation—average efficiency, variance, the sheer performance of it. They've blown the previous efficiency record by three percentage points. Three impossible percentage points. He's never reached that level with Adam. He's never _dreamed_ of reaching that level. Within Atlas, their NERD was steady, always better than the other teams, more than enough to pilot a Jaeger and survive, but it's always been somewhat uninspired and textbook-like. Boring.

The pulsing charts on the datapad are everything but boring: they're wild and unpredictable as they detail each decision they've made as a team, moving Atlas in unison. Even the rash decisions and unconventional moves that would have shattered the drift of all active pilots around the world, barely makes their neural drift tremble. It pulses strong like steel, smooth like water.

He returns the tablet to Matt's hands before he goes too far in the training exercise, and watches Matt's face instead as he swipes through the rest of the analysis charts. His eyes are a bit wet, although it's hard to guess whether if it's due to their stellar performance, or the way it all went to hell in less than a second.

Shiro looks away. Iverson has stopped glaring at Keith's empty cot. Instead, he's talking animatedly with Sanda.

“ _Where is he?”_ he sees her mouth, dismissing Iverson's protests with a wave of her hand. “I don't care how long it takes you. _Find him.”_

_No. Leave him alone, Shiro thinks and t_ ries to stand without thought, but a hand on his shoulder drags him back on the small cot.

“Please, take it slow,” Adam whispers into his ear, and helplessly, he watches as Iverson himself stomps out of the med bay, following by three crew members.

Then, Sam is in front of him, blocking his view of the door. Like his son, he almost radiates with excitement, his eyes blazing, slightly glazed, as if he'd caught a brief glimpse of the rapture. “You must tell me everything.”

Adam's hand slides down Shiro's arm to take his hand. He squeezes, tight. “Come on, Sam. Let him breathe.”

“You don't understand. The more we wait, the less precise the experiences. We must record it all before Shiro starts to _forget_.”

Shiro lets out a brittle laugh. Forget. He has the distinct impression he won't be that easy. Even now, blood thrums under his fingers and he can't quite shake off the feeling that he should reach out to his right for warm skin, to hold and not let go.

“It was just another drift,” Adam bites back.

“ _You don't understand,”_ Sam repeats, the righteous fire of an academic burning behind his eyes. “This is groundbreaking—absolutely groundbreaking. Colleen will never been the same once I publish this.” Sam says. “We've only hypothesized that humans could reach that level of efficiency. In theory, you could have access to more than memories at the stage. Feelings and hopes. Dreams even.”

Dreams. Keith splayed out on thin sheets that have been washed so many times over the years that they've lost their color, and their hands linked tight together as he kisses the soft skin of Keith's inner thighs.

“Excuse me,” is the only thing he can manage to say before he half-runs out of the room.

  


  


  


He tries the roof first, because he knows now, with the unforgiving clarity offered by the drift, that this is where Keith feels the safest in the shatterdome. But there, he's only met with the light pollution of nearby LA and the threat of rain. He tries the gym next, but the treadmills are empty, so is the ring area, where the lonely, beaten-down punching bag stands utterly still.

He stares at it for a moment or two before he finds the strength to move again. He sets for hangar 3, the huge open space where Jaegers are built from the ground up and repaired. There's permanent scaffolding that drapes across the walls like spiderwebs, and a small, isolated alcove on the fifteenth floor that overlooks Galaxy Atlas's right shoulder. Keith used to find solace there after his arrival, long before they'd cemented their friendship, and had kept slinking back to it, but as he walks, cadets, technicians, every damn soul stops to stare and watch him strut by. News travel fast in the shatterdome. Gossip moves even faster. And somehow that's the last straw. Shiro can't take it. Every mutter of _Shiro the Hero,_ every gasp of the _wonder drifter_ feels like an insult, like the worst of rebukes as if they all knew precisely what he'd done to his friend.

To his best friend.

To Keith.

His feet change course halfway, and minutes later he's slamming the door of his quarters behind him, panting as if he'd run all the way there.

_You can trust me_ , he'd said and Keith had followed him into the drift with that promise, which he'd broken at the first opportunity.

_Please, Shiro, don't._

He remembers now. Every plead. Every scream. He's ignored all of them, taking what he wanted. He covers his mouth.

He can't go to that alcove.

He can't use the knowledge of the drift. He can't take advantage like that again.

On the bed, his datapad chirps with an incoming notification.

He can't use what he knows from the drift, but he reach out the old-fashioned way. He pulls up the communication app, ignoring the usual torrent of reports, scrolling past new messages from Allura, Pidge and Adam to find Keith's name. He opens the thread.

_Clear skies and low humidity on Saturday. You in?_ Keith had written just this morning. He remembers now. He'd smiled at the message, because they'd hoping for a good forecast for days. The LA shatterdome was probably one of the worst place on earth to stargaze, but it was high Perseid season. They had to give it a shot.

He'd been so excited at the prospect of spending a quiet night with his best friend. Thinking nothing of it, he'd written back: _It's a date!_ It'd been innocent enough. He was only trying to be funny and make his best friend smile during his morning briefing. It'd taken a few minutes for Keith to answer with a simple: _Cool._ Truly, he'd thought nothing of it, because this morning, he hadn't known that his best friend was in love with him.

_Rings on their fingers. Meals shared in silence, ankles linked together beneath the small table. Their bodies, almost overheating so close together on their bed._

The waves of nausea hits him all at once. He folds to his knees, clutching the datapad between his hands until the screensaver kicks in and he's left to stare at a black screen.

He looks up as the heavy door opens, minutes or hours later, and Adam breathes out a relieved sigh. “There you are.”

His arm comes around Shiro's shoulder a second later and he's drawn into an embrace, the warmth of Adam's body against his own like an electric shock.

“I'm fine,” he says. He swallows carefully as he pulls away from Adam, and smiles, hating how easily it comes.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry, I ran out earlier. I needed some air.”

“That's okay,” Adam smiles and puts a small, dry kiss on his lips. Then, he moves around their shared room as he has a thousand times before, shedding his uniform in favor of a soft Berkeley shirt and sweatpants before he goes to brush his teeth. Mechanically, Shiro does the same.

“Sanda has scheduled a run for us tomorrow. 1000 sharp,” Adam says, after they've settled down for the night. “I can try to postpone it if you don't feel up to it.”

“I'm fine.”

In the dark, Adam turns towards him. “Of course, you are. I just need she needs confirmation. She doesn't want to lose her best pilots, does she?” Adam yawns. “We'll show them it was just another drift for you.”

“Yeah, just another drift,” Shiro lies and waits until Adam has fallen asleep to retrieve his datapad. He pulls up the communication app and writes the few sentences that have been pounding like a headache in his mind for hours, his eyes watering under the sudden, aggressive light of the screen before he shoves it under his pillow.

It's an awful night. The kind that is too too warm and itchy. The kind that seems to stretch forever while his heart pounds in his chest for no reason. The kind where he wakes up every twenty minutes, completely disoriented, half-hoping it's finally morning, half-hoping there are enough hours left to the night that he can rest enough to face another day.

That kind of awful, terrible night.

That's why when the alarm finally rings and he'd finally, _finally_ found rest, he groans and rolls towards the warm body at his side, burying his face into warm skin, hoping to pursue his sleep. A pipe dream, he knows, but he sighs happily as the alarm stops ringing and the weight of another body settles against him, the warmth and solidity of it impossibly good. Shiro's hard, low-key arousal lingering after half-forgotten dreams, and he grinds slowly against the body in his arm, pressing a kiss against his lover's spine.

“Good dream?”

Shiro hums and lets his hand wander under a soft shirt and across warm skin, stroking the span of a stomach and upper chest as he rolls his hips, chasing friction. Slowly, he registers the small details. The incessant buzzing of the AC, pulsing fake, recycled air. The bed hard, but not lumpy and borderline aggressive with all its springs. The hair, too thin, too short beneath his lips.

His hand freezes.

“Takashi?”

Shiro jerks away and as Adam turns in his arms, a question hanging on his lips.

“We're going to be late for the simulation,” Shiro blurts out before Adam can say anything, wondering faintly if he should apologize.

He says nothing more and gets up to put on his uniform.

  


  


  


By sheer will, he makes their simulation work, the beat tame and patient between them, moving Atlas through the garrison-patented moves. It's either sheer will or absolute terror that makes it work, because Shiro can barely breathe throughout the run, aware of everything he keeps tightly locked in the corners of the drift, away from Adam. Half-formed sensations still creep through—a sharp smile and a bright laugh—and Shiro has to devote half of his attention to shove them back in the back of his mind, where Adam can't access them.

Somehow, the simulation is a success, even if he steps out of his combat frame with a debilitating migraine.

He waves off Adam's concern.

“I just need to sleep,” he says and staggers through the shatterdome to his bed. The whispers as he walks by are not kinder than they were yesterday, but they're easier to ignore, with the way his ears are still ringing.

He falls face first into his mattress, groaning against the coarse linens. His hand crawls under the pillow and he drags the tablet in front of his face. Squinting, he scrolls through emails and notifications. When he finds the right thread of communication, though, it's painfully silent. He's not really surprised, but it doesn't dull the ache.

He falls asleep almost instantly.

His subconscious is not kinder. For the second night in a row, Shiro wakes up hard and panting. He barely muffles his gasp and his hands come up to his eyes, pressing down until bright lights dance behind his eyelids, wishing somehow they could chase away his dream. He's not confused this morning though. He knows exactly whose hands he has imagined on his skin and whose whines echoed against his hair.

Beside him, Adam shifts in his sleep and curls on his side, closer to Shiro. He always looks younger asleep, maybe because of the lack of glasses, but he can't focus on Adam's features, his mind too full of thick, dark hair rather than the thin chestnut, of lean, pale limbs instead of Adam's darker skin.

The floor is a cold shock to his feet as he rolls away from Adam and hurries over to their small shower.

The water comes out freezing cold, battering against his shoulders. His whole body seizes with it, the sting of cold almost unbearable. For the first time, it's a relief. He only allows his hands to grapple against the stall's steel walls, but the rest of him endures the assault of cold water, raising goosebumps and beating the remaining warmth between his legs into submission.

_Focus._

He grits his teeth. Two boys huddled over books in a darkened library, their bodies entwined under the sheets, warm and soft, their laughter as they wave to the masses, acclaiming their victory.

_Come on, Ranger_ , Keith would purr in his ear, thighs bracketing his hips and that's not something he's seen in the drift. That's coming entirely from him.

“This has to stop,” Shiro whispers to the empty stall.

They have to talk.

The corridors are mostly empty as he makes his way to Keith's dorm. It's early enough that there is only the slow buzzing of the air conditioning to fill the corridors. He's grateful for the privacy. He doesn't think he would be able to manage a smile and small talk.

He bangs twice on the door, _loud_ —the usual courtesy in a military base with no privacy—and enters. Lance jerks up wildly, almost falling off his bed in his rush to turn around. It's probably because he's still half-asleep that Shiro can read each of his emotions as if he'd spoken them aloud. Anger, then disappointment, then somehow, pity.

The lower bunk bed is neatly made, sheets drawn with military precision, and empty.

His words die in his throat as he sees the star chart pinned to the wall next to Keith's pillow. It's a bit gaudy, the kind that glows in the dark, clearly meant for children. Shiro knows it vividly: he'd given it to Keith on his last birthday. It'd taken him weeks to track anything down, and it was the best that had turned up. Ebay was not what it once was. He'd bought it on a whim, but when he had handed it over, he'd felt like the world's biggest idiot. This was a child's toy and Keith was a grown man who probably slept with a knife under his pillow. He almost snatched it back from Keith's eager hands as he'd teared into the ugly craft paper. Almost—but there'd been a long pause as Keith stared down at the gift numbly and held it in his hands, as if he didn't know quite what to do with it. Shiro's thoughts had stilled then, long enough to watch quietly as Keith unwrapped the clunky package. And he had loved it, an excited smile splitting his face when he'd realized exactly what it was. They'd spent hours on the garrison's roof, tracing the tiny little dots. They couldn't quite compare with the original because of the clouds, but it'd been enough. In their minds, they traced the brightest: Sirius and Vega; then planets: Mars and Mercury; then constellations: Orion and Cassiopeia; then all the rest, most of it not even on the chart: Jupiter. Callisto. Beltegeuse. Pluto. Kerberos.

The memory is warm and simple in his mind, one among many. So many others. Enough to fuel a thousand drifts.

But now, the star chart hangs lonely on the wall. No pictures. No notes. The only sign that somebody lives there—the only indulgence.

Shiro's fingers tighten on the edge of the door.

“He hasn't been back here since—well.” Lance clears his throat. “Sorry, Shiro. He hasn't been back.”

“That's ok. Sorry I woke you” says Shiro, crafting the most level tone he can muster. He doesn't think it would last for long. He smiles instead. “Let me know if he turns up.”

But he lingers in the doorway, giving a last glance to the star chart. It's easy to imagine Keith lying there, chasing down sleep while watching the best thing to the stars when living in a metal box.

“I won't give up,” he mutters, a second before the Kaiju alarm roars to life.

  


  


  


“Takashi!” Adam yells and stumbles towards Shiro, his suit half-on, dragging a techie behind him. “It's nowhere on the Kaiju scale. They've opened a whole new category!”

Shiro drags Adam by the neck, forcing a kiss on his lips and pushing all the rest in the depths of his mind. Two boys huddled over books in a darkened library, their bodies entwined under the sheets, warm and soft—their laughter as they wave to the masses, acclaiming their _victory._ It has to be enough.

It always has been.

“The first CAT-IV. _Our_ first CAT-IV,” Shiro grins. “Codename?”

Adam grins back. “Codename: Sendak.”

  


  


  


They strut through the hallways like kings, their steps on the metal grates leading up to the Conn-Pod following the beat of the blaring alarms like the sweetest music.

“Let's go destroy some Kaiju,” Adam says as he dives into Atlas's Conn-Pod and Shiro grins, ducking to follow him.

_Don't die don't die don't die—_ the echo of Keith's thoughts is suddenly louder than the alarms and he pauses. He shouldn't—he should stay focused. Adam. The drift. That's what matters.

He turns back, searching for the corner of the hallway, a smile and a wave at the ready despite everything because it's tradition. It's what they do.

The corner of the hallway is empty.

Shiro hovers at the entrance of the Conn-Pod, the Kaiju alarm blaring in his ears, until a techie grabs his arm and he can't wait anymore. As he's being strapped into the combat frame, he gathers the pain, the guilt and the betrayal. He gathers all of it to pack them neatly into a new box and relegates it in the recesses of his mind. It's enough. He'll deal with it later.

The doors of the shatterdome open in front of their Jaeger and slowly Atlas steps forward to meet the apocalypse.

  


  


  


Shiro forgets most of what goes down in the hours that follow.

_The shock was too violent_ , is what he hears from the shatterdome medical staff when he wakes up. _Physically_ . _Emotionally_ . _Simply too violent_ , they mutter, nodding among themselves with grim faces, and make careful notes on their datapads like they understand anything. That’s the only thing they’ll tell him. _The shock_ , they say when he wakes up after days of unconsciousness. _The shock_ , they say when he the utter anguish when he understands what has happened. _The shock_ , they say when he realizes weeks later that the roots of his hair are growing pure white.

_The shock,_ they say.

That's why he can't remember.

He pieces the events together the best he can. First what he can pry away from the med staff's careful mouths and then from his friends. Later, he’ll glean much more from footage of panicked freelance journalists and obscure blog posts when he’s released from the med bay and left to convalesce alone in brand-new quarters. But Allura tells him all he needs to know in a slow, gentle but unyielding voice, as she holds his hand. She tells him how Sendak almost makes landfall, stopped within the miracle mile by Survivor Altea's desperate rush while Galaxy Atlas slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

The sequence of events becomes clear in his mind, like something he's learned from a history book or memorized in his mechanics manual, but he never truly remembers: how the beat soars and then goes silent, forcing Atlas to a halt in the middle of the ocean, left without defense to Sendak's mercy.

He never remembers how he loses his arm. How Adam loses much more.

How Adam loses everything.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me longer to get this out than I first thought--hope you enjoy, thank you all for those who left kudos or commented on the first chapter <3 it really means the world!

 

 

 

The thick air, laced with dirt and exhaust, is almost welcome as he steps out of the climate-controlled studio. He pushes forward, leaving the back entrance of the building behind him, and sinks into the back alleys of downtown LA.

Shiro the Hero, he fumes.

That's the stupidest nickname the media has come up with so far. And he knows it will stick, right beside the wonder drifter, precisely because it's catchy and so stupid. He should have punched Jimmy Bibobi's face the moment and caved his perfect teeth in the moment he uttered the words. His fist ends up punching the brick wall of the alleyway instead.

It hurts, but the pain helps him focus. He breathes out slowly, shaking out his hand.

He'll talk to Iverson first thing in the morning. He's done with the rodeo shows. He's done with the strutting and parading like a show pony. 

He's done.

The resolution helps his heartbeat to settle down. 

Time to go back. The media team will so pissed off with him when they realize he's skipped the meet-and-greet after the televised interview. He turns to go back, but a faint squeal echoes in the alley and he stills. He listens—muted buzz of distant traffic, the amorphous sounds of the city, nothing abnormal—and he tenses, half-expecting to see a rat burst from under the trash containers. But then—there's another squeal, clear and pained, the kind that does not come from animals. It's human.

He treads further into the alley and the pained sounds grow louder and joined by other sounds: jeers and hoots of laughter. He flattens his body against a wall to peek around the corner.

He sees five men, young and scrappy looking, with feral eyes and mean snarls. Thugs. Scum. Laughing and whistling among themselves as they push a boy around. It reminds Shiro of a cat playing with a mouse as they let the boy—he can't be older than fifteen, all gangly limbs and terrified eyes—scramble away just far enough to give hope, before one of them grabs him and throw him into the waiting fists of another. Shiro winces as one of the men manages a nasty punch to the boy's face. He wails, hands coming up to protect his nose even as blood seeps through his fingers. 

He should go get help. That's what Adam would do. There are five of them. He could be overwhelmed and then what. He's a Jaeger pilot. His well-being, his health and his life are all priceless. Walk away and get help. He almost does, but then, the boy cries out and crumbles to the ground. Even if he curls on himself and protects his head, it won't help much if they all decide to bludgeon him to death with their feet.

Shiro squares his shoulders, hands curling into fists, just as a blur of red flashes at the corner of his eyes and another body dives into the fray without a sound.

The first man falls unconscious to the ground too fast for Shiro to understand. The second follows a second later, just as the thugs realize the rules of the games have changed. Shiro stays rooted in the shadows, gaping as he tries to understand what is seeing.

He moves like water, faster than quicksilver and stronger than steel. He ducks under punches and slithers away from grabbing hands. He anticipates each attack as the remaining men get enough of their bearing to push back. There's not a movement that is not needed, not a movement superfluous. He lands just a few hits, each of them perfectly placed and pitiless. Three moves. That's all it takes to get rid of the remaining thugs. A punch to the temple. A kick to the groin. And a faint, beautiful, to use his opponent's momentum and slam him to the ground.

It's over as soon as it started, the five thugs sprawled around him either unconscious or groaning in pain, but he doesn't let his guard down, scanning the alley, assessing for any immediate danger, and his eyes round on Shiro, still hovering at the corner, half in the shadows.

He’s smaller and alone, but he stands as he has an army behind his back as he snarls and puts his fists up. “You want some too?”

He's young too and striking: black gloves and a bright red jacket that looks like it came straight out of some vintage Hong Kong action movie. Sharp features and thick hair that hide intense, angry eyes.

Shiro takes a step back instinctively. “I wanted—” he trails off. It doesn't matter. “Is he ok?”

“Fuck off”, the guy spits and dismisses Shiro instantly as he kneels next to his injured friend to shake his shoulder. Hard. “Wake up, Rolo.”

There's a groan for the boy. “Keith?”

“Yeah,” the newcomer, Keith, says, just a tad softer. “Come on. We gotta go.”

Rolo sits up painstakingly, Keith supporting half of his weight. His face is a giant bruise, already puffed up and angry looking. Half of it is covered with blood from what has to be a broken nose. He whines as Keith pulls him up to his knees and clutches his midriff. Broken ribs, internal bleeding: anything's possible after such a beating.

“He needs to go to a hospital,” Shiro says.

“No shit. And who's going to pay for the bills? You?” Keith snorts. “As I said,  _ fuck off _ .”

Keith slings Rolo's arm over his shoulders and loops his other arm around Rolo's waist, and together they shuffle down the alley, Keith half-carrying half-dragging his friend away from the scuffle.

He doesn't see as one of the thug slowly gets up and picks up a crowbar, but Shiro does. He rushes forward and grabs the heavy metal bar an inch before it slams against Keith’s head and punches the attacker punches him in the face. 

It hurts even more than the brick wall. It’s also way more satisfying as the thug goes down like a lump. 

“Still think I should fuck off?” Shiro asks as Keith turns around. 

His eyes zooms on the crowbar as it clatters to the ground, then on the man’s still form, sprawled on the ground, then drag up Shiro’s body. They linger on the stripes across Shiro's shoulder and then snap to his face. Perhaps it's the dress uniform that gives Shiro away. Perhaps it's just his face. After all, it's plastered all across the city in giant billboards. Either way, Keith recognizes him instantly. His entire face betrays him, eyes widening with disbelief, mouth going slack. 

“Let me help,” Shiro says, moving past Keith’s stunned silence. He slings his own arm under Rolo’s shoulders, meeting Keith's eyes over Rolo's head. “Lead the way.”

It's still a slow process. After five minutes, Shiro is sweating through his clothes. As they walk away for the downtown area, lights become scarce, the sidewalk unkempt and littered with trash. Once, it must have been a prosperous part of the city. Now, it looks more like some half-abandoned junkyard. The economic downturn has hit the coastlines the hardest. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle. Real estate prices have sunk to a historical low as anybody who could moved away within the country, away from the water. Left behind were only the stubborn or the poor.

“Where are we going?” Shiro asks.

“There's a shelter a few blocks down.”

What Keith calls a shelter is a quaint little house, two-story tall but squat. It must have been blue once, but now it's difficult to describe it as anything but decrepit. The front door opens just as they step through the gate and one of the most beautiful woman he's ever seen steps through the doorway. He spends most of his time with Allura--beautiful is not a word he uses lightly—but in the spilling light of her home, her hair wild around her head, a baseball bat raised high above her head, the woman looks like an avenging angel.

Keith doesn't even blink. “Romelle, a little help?” he grunts.

“Keith!” she drops the bat all at once and she rushes to them. “Oh Rolo,” she whispers as she brushes the hair of the boy's eyes. Shiro steps back without a word as she slings her own arm across Rolo's torso to help him across the threshold.

The house might have been quaint from the outside, but the inside is pure chaos. There's a staircase hugging the wall, and two doors that might lead to a restroom or closet space, but most of the ground floor is an open space, which combines a kitchen and a living room. All of it is covered in clutter, books, clothes and furniture crowding up the space. But what is most striking is that among all the mess, is the small pack of children. No, not children. Teenagers. Half-of-them are cluttered over the threadbare couch where Romelle is fussing over Rolo's moaning form. The rest of them are all clamoring for Keith's attention, a handful of shouts and half-formed questions at a time. 

Shiro hesitates in the doorway, uncertain that his presence would be welcome. It’s chaos, but an organized one. Like a home should be. Or perhaps not a home, but a safe space. 

Keith catches his eyes over their heads and slowly extirpate himself from the gaggle of teenagers with a few words.

“Is he going to be ok?” Shiro asks.

“In time,” Keith bares his teeth. “I'll wait until he recovers before I kick his ass for getting mixed up with that crowd.”

Shiro smiles. “Is he your brother?” 

Keith barks out a laugh. “That shithead? Fuck no. I mean—no, he's not. I don't have any—this is an orphan only establishment—I mean,” Keith trips over his words. “After the San Francisco landfall, there were many orphans. If they were young enough, they might have found a new family. But teenagers—well, it's not that easy. Romelle takes care of them. I help if I can. I have—well, I have a certain perspective.” 

“Is that what—are you?”

“How old do you think I am?” Keith snorts, leaning against the doorframe. “Orphans weren't invented with the first Kaiju landfall, you know.”

Heat spreads across his cheeks, and he’s helpless to prevent it. “Shit—I mean. Sorry. I didn't mean—”

Keith grins. “I'm joking, Ranger.”

Ranger. That's what the stripes on his shoulders mean. It's his rank and he responds to it almost as easily as his name. He's never quite heard it like that though: half-praise, half-barb, but all snark and impudence. He grins back, racking his mind for an appropriate reply—something witty and sharp—but a chorus of giggles and whispers erupts from the other side of the hall and Keith winces. 

“I'm grateful for your help, but you should go before the bunch of them realize who you are,” Keith says lower. “Otherwise, they'll never let you go.” 

Shiro nods. He should go. He's been carefully ignoring the way his emergency phone has been buzzing in his pocket for the past fifteen minutes. 

Something thin and fragile is holding him back and he knows well-enough to trust his gut.

Keith leans forward, closing the door halfway to shield Shiro from the living room. “Listen—Sorry I told you to fuck off,” he says gruffly, rubbing the back of his need. “I wanted to say thanks for all that you do. You know—protecting the coast.”

Shiro is used to the gratitude and devotion from the crowds. This feels different. This feels  _ more _ . Anger and envy mixed into the bundle of thankfulness. 

“It seems to me you're helping too,” Shiro says, voice soft. 

“Yeah, I try for that lot. It's just—I wish I could do more,” Keith says and just like that, the balance tips and falls.

“The shatterdome is hosting preliminary trials in a week. They're open to all,” Shiro says. “You should come.”

“Huh?” is all that Keith manages.

“I've never seen anyone fight like you,” Shiro continues. “You would be a great pilot.”

A great Jaeger pilot, he doesn't make the precision, but it's clear from the way Keith's eyes widen.

“Think about it,” Shiro says and gives into the impulse of squeezing Keith's shoulder before he leaves. “Next week. I'll be looking for you.”

  
  


A week later, everyone and anyone who knows how to throw a punch shows up at the gates of the shatterdome. They eliminate almost half of them in the first round: the violent and the reckless, the suicidal and the phonies. Unfit. Rejected. The rest they take to the second round: the calibration test. They eliminate almost all of them. Potential for drifting is rare. Most of human minds are not cut for sharing a brain. They end up with two promising profiles: Hunk, whose overblown anxiety betrays an iron will that would be invaluable in any drift, and Lance, who's all show, expect when he's not and turns into a true combat genius. That's what the report states as Shiro reads it quietly in his bunk. He combs through the appendix, listing all the dismissed candidates, but finds nothing than he already knew.

Keith was not among the candidates.

It's easy to quietly sneak out of the shatterdome after dark. Easier than he thought it would be really. The guards are either too surprised to stop him or don't even think of questioning his destination. The hard part is finding his way back to the small dainty house in downtown LA. He knows that he's at the right address only when a beautiful girl steps out of the front door brandishing a baseball bat high over her head.

“Romelle, is it?” Shiro says with his smoothest voice. “I was here recently. I helped with one of your boys. Rolo?”

Slowly, she puts the bat down. “I remember. Of course—“ she smooths down her hair awkwardly. She's wearing an apron, covered with stains and partly wet. Behind her, loud conversations that border on shouting matches spill out of the open door. Still, she smiles. “Please, come on in.”

“I wouldn't want to impose,” Shiro smiles back. “Is Keith here? I was hoping to talk to him.”

Keith doesn't live here, he learns. She doesn’t know where Keith lives at all, only that he trains in a gym close-by. She doesn’t know much about Keith. He only helps out when there's work to be done, and despite her pleads, he's never taken up her offer on lodgings, warm food or companionship. But she trusts him. He's a good friend, a true friend, she tells him, although a distant one.

She looks relieved when he steps away from her pathway with precise directions to the nearest gym. He finds it easily enough, although gym is too nice of a word to describe it. Well, it might have been nice twenty years ago. Now, water stains color the walls and the linoleum floor is crusted with dirt. There's no-one at the reception to stop him and the few patrons are too focused on their own workout to pay him any mind as they pound away on ancestral treadmills that probably should have broken down years ago. He finds the ring in the back of the gym behind tarps that close off the section. The lamps are all busted, but a few stand-alone lights make it possible to distinguish the ancient ring and scattered exercise equipment.

Keith does not notice him, completely focused on a lonely, battered punching bag. The stray lights hug Keith's figure as he moves across techniques: power punches, body strikes and uppercuts, all of them delivered in seamless succession. It's more than exercise. It's more than letting off steam. It looks easier than breathing, beautiful and artless.

It looks like a dance.

Shiro takes a deep breath, readying himself for the onslaught and moves forward.

“You didn't show,” Shiro says loudly.

“What the—” Keith yelps as he whirls around. The punching bag follows its momentum and whacks Keith's shoulder. 

“The trials were yesterday,” Shiro continues, smirking as Keith stumbles forward, rubbing his shoulder. “Why didn't you show?”

Keith gawks at him. “Are you kidding me? What are you—Are you  _ stalking _ me?” 

Shiro laughs, then moves forward to still the awkward bobbing of the punching bag. “Not stalking. Just determined,” Shiro says, smiling down at Keith's offended face. “You have potential. It would be a shame to waste it.”

Shiro has authority in the shatterdome. Cadets stop to salute him as he walks by. His rank allows him to stand in LOCCENT when the Kaiju alarm ring. He pilots a massive mechanical robot on a daily basis. Shiro won't deny it. It stings a little when Keith laughs right in his face.

“You think your overlords are going to let me pilot a Jaeger?” Keith scoffs. “Me? A nobody from nowhere? Come on, Ranger. It's not my potential you're wasting. It's your time.”

Here it is again.  _ Ranger.  _ Half of Shiro’s brain reacts instinctively to the title, forcing him to  stand taller and pay attention. The other half recognizes the underlying current of defiance and sheer insolence. 

“The shatterdome has enough soldiers,” he grins, because he can be cocky too, and he grabs Keith’s shoulder. “We need people who know how to fight. I waited for you, you know. I was hoping to show you off to the brass. Let them know what really fighting looks like outside of the handbook.”

It takes Keith off guard—his expression cracks. Beneath the defiance, there’s something softer and hopeful, not quite scared but determined, ready to fight against the universe. Shiro catches only a glimpse of it before it washes away from his face, hidden by a thin veneer of impatience. 

“Look, Ranger—”

“My name's Shiro.”

Keith glares at him. “Look,  _ Shiro.  _ I appreciate the sentiment, but I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” Keith repeats faintly. “I can't just leave. I have—I can help people here.”

“I know. Why do you think I came back?” Shiro says. “Anyone can throw a punch, but it takes someone strong to put themselves on the line for those who are in need. I've seen you do it. You _care_ about them and you're ready to bleed for it.” He's seen it in that alley when Keith stepped in front of his young friend, jaw set and fists raised. He's seen it as he spoke calmly to a gaggle of teenagers crowding around the threadbare couch. “Now you're helping a bunch of the children that have been forgotten and left to fend for themselves, but you said you wanted to do more.” 

Keith takes a step back, and Shiro follows him, crowding against the ring. “Well, here I am, offering you a chance to help all of them. Why won't you take it? You could make a real difference.”

Keith’s gaze is heavy on him as silence spreads between them, thick and uncomfortable. 

“I'll tell you what,” Shiro says and he hoists himself up onto to the ring. “Let’s have a spar. If you beat me, then that's the last you'll see of me.”

Keith glares at him. “That's where I'm supposed to say  _ and what if I don't? _ , isn't it.”

“If you don't, then I'll see you at the gates of the shatterdome tomorrow. 0700 sharp.”

He leans over the ropes, smirking down at Keith. For a moment, he’s certain that Keith will refuse, shrug and leave. Only for a moment, because Keith slides under the ropes and falls into place in front of Shiro. 

“Show me what you got, Ranger,” Keith spits, teeth bared. 

Shiro beckons him forward. He means to keep it genteel and educational, and barely manages to stay upright as Keith launches himself at him, a blur of fists and under-leg swipes. Instinct takes over, and he manages to deflect the brunt of Keith's attack. He forgets about genteelness and education after that first pass and gives what he’s got. All of it. If he didn’t, he’s pretty sure he'd lose. He hasn't moved like that, without thinking, without holding anything back since—he can't remember. Perhaps never.

It feels exhilarating. 

His lungs are burning by the time he manages to pin Keith down on the mat. It’s the second time he pins him to the mat to be fair. The first time he’d thought that holding Keith’s wrists down would be enough to claim his victory, but Keith has slithered down from under him like an eel and had almost taken the victory for himself. This time, Shiro puts a knee across Keith's throat. He's careful not to put any pressure, but he could choke him easily if he did. The threat of the final blow is enough. Keith goes limp beneath him and closes his eyes.

“You're good, but you've got a lot to learn,” Shiro grins as he helps Keith to his feet.

Keith's lip curls into a fine line. “Why don't we go another round? I'll show you how fast I can learn.”

“I'll see you tomorrow, Keith. 0700 sharp,” Shiro says and squeezes Keith’s arm. “Don't make me wait.” 

He walks away, laughing outright at Keith's insulted gasp, and smiles all the way back to the shatterdome.

  
  


The next morning, Shiro is at the gates way too early. The guards put up a meager salute, and he bribes one into escorting him to the outer gate where he'll be able to see Keith arrive first. Minutes tick by. Ten, then twenty, then thirty, and then it's almost 7AM and something foreign creeps along Shiro's spine, something sharp and bitter. Disappointment.

Next to him, the guard yawns. “Waiting for someone special, Sir?”

He looks down at his watch. 0700 has come and gone: Keith is not coming.

“No, it was no-one special.”

  
  


Shiro blinks awake, head buried into his pillow, and for a moment, he can't parse the truth from his dream. He lies still for a few heartbeats, digesting the bitter aftertaste of the dream until he can think again and remembers.

Keith came that day.

He came with a few minutes to spare, barely out of breath as he'd jogged towards the entrance in his red jacket, a single backpack slung over his shoulder. He remembers it so clearly now. Shiro had moved forward to greet him, ignoring the half-hearted complaints from the guard, and his hand had moved instinctively to grasp Keith's shoulder.

“You're just in time,” Shiro had said then, smiling down at Keith's guarded face. “Come with me.”

Back in his bed, Shiro sits up slowly, struggling with his balance even after all these months. It's always harder in the mornings, when his mind is still foggy and reality has not quite kicked in yet. He allows himself a few seconds to breathe, sitting at the edge of his single bed before he rises and lets the routine swallow him whole. 

  
  


  
  


  
  


The third generation of cadets are soldiers.

Sanda has picked them out personally, disregarding Sam’s suggestions and Iverson’s experience to choose men and women with a singular profile: they all know how to fight. They're disciplined. Best of all, they're ready to die for the garrison. 

Sanda sees those characteristics as strengths, and in a way, they are. They absorb the cadets’ battery of trainings with unparalleled ease. Sanda does not see their weakness: their minds are rigid. 

“Again!” Shiro barks from the platform where he's overseeing the exercise. He's a captain now, the promotion a bitter reward for all his failures, and the cadets obey him seamlessly, falling into another rep without complaints.

Shiro hates it.

They follow order mechanically. By now, Lance would have disrupted the whole session by begging for shooting practices, Hunk and Pidge would have tried to slip away unseen to work on their research, and Keith—his fingers tighten around his datapad—who knows what Keith would have done. Perhaps he could have guessed a few months ago. Now it's anyone's guess.

“Anyone promising?”

Shiro startles as Allura comes up to his side. Dressed in grayish fatigues and hands deep in her pockets, she's elegant and commanding. No wonder everyone calls her Princess behind her back.

“Well?” she prompts again.

Shiro turns back towards the training mat. The cadets have not flinched at the interruption, continuing their forms in quiet concentration.

“Griffin and Kinkade. Rizavi and Leifsdottir,” Shiro points out in quick succession. “They'll make the next drift. Perhaps even survive it. The others are useless.”

Allura says nothing besides him, but her disappointment is almost palpable. He used to be kinder. More patient. More hopeful. He hasn't quite managed to be either in a long time. There's no point. The last time he plucked someone from—No.

Shiro sets his jaw and focuses his attention back to the neat rows of cadets, watching the end of the sequence like a hawk. 

“That's enough for today,” Shiro calls. “Kinkade, work on your footwork. Rizavi, this is your last warning. Show me you can execute this attack sequence or you'll be expelled from the program. Tomorrow or nothing. You're all dismissed.”

The cadets break off immediate to collect their gear and they file out of the room in silence.

_ Good,  _ Shiro thinks as he watches Ina help Lisa gather her things and they walk away, huddled close together. It's the last push they need—some electric shock to cement their bond. He doesn't mind being the villain if it means they make it work. 

“I am stepping down as Altea's pilot,” Allura says.

He'd almost forgotten Allura was at his side. Half lost in his projections for future practices, the words barely register. “What?”

“I am stepping down as Altea's pilot,” she repeats. “Today is my last day of active duty.” She smiles, the way she often smiles: a bit sad, but always kind. “This cannot come as a surprise, Shiro. My connection with Lotor has been on the decline for months. Surely, you must have known.”

Of course, he knows. He's seen the numbers. Weekly reports on the beats of all active and stand-by pilots are sent to all officers. Their beat has been on the decline, but it's still good enough to hold a steady drift, good enough to stay and  _ fight. _

“Allura,” Shiro manages. “Why?”

“It is the right thing to do,” Allura continues, unperturbed. “Lance has achieved a solid connection with his sister. They will be able to take up Altea's command and ensure the first line of defense.”

Shiro knows that too. He's read the memos. It's not an explanation.

“But  _ why? _ ”

Allura pauses, a complicated look crossing her face. “People change. Lotor has changed—too much for me to follow,” she scoffs. “Or perhaps it is me who has too changed too much. We have grown apart. We have lost what used to make us a good team.”

Shiro stills, warmth spilling through his body. It burns—his chest is too tight, the beat of his heart suddenly painful. 

“This is what I want, Shiro,” Allura continues. “This is what I've wanted for a long time. I was meaning to step down six months before—“

“Before I screwed up,” Shiro cuts in.

“It is the right thing to do,” Allura repeats. “Before there is another tragedy.”

Shiro looks away. A tragedy. That's one way to put it.

“I understand,” Shiro says, the words painful as if he was swallowing glass shards. “What will you do?”

“Lotor will take a position with the Russian shatterdome. He has—projects there. I will go back to Altea. The company needs me, and I believe I can do more good there than I can here,” she pauses and when Shiro manages to look at her in the eyes again, he finds them wet. “I am sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Shiro scoffs and draws Allura against him, wrapping his arm around her, tablet and all. “If that's what you want, then of course, I'll support it.”

Her arms come up around his neck.

“We are having a party in the recreation room tonight after Command makes the official announcement,” Allura says. “Please, will you come?”

He almost refuses on the spot—a force of habit after months of darkness and routine—but the warmth of her arms around his neck and the thick, comforting smell of her perfume thick on his tongue still his tongue. Her company’s headquarters are not far, but he will miss her presence in the shatterdome. He owes her that. 

“Of course,” he whispers. 

When they part, Allura lifts her hands to cup his face, her thumbs brushing gently against the edge of his scar. 

“I have a gift for you before I go,” she whispers and draws back. “Check your inbox.”

He frowns as he pulls up Allura's message—no content, just an attachment—and scrolls past an endless jumble of statistics, detailed diagnostics and calibrations until he finds the first schematic drawing. He doesn't understand what he's looking at first. His brain struggles before the abstract shapes translate into fingers, the articulation of an elbow and the tendons of a forearm. It’s an arm, slick and strong, full of elegant lines and the whites and grays of the metal alloys so specific to Altea's tech. 

A Jaeger arm.

“Three years ago, it would have been impossible to engineer this,” says Allura. “But then three years ago, the field was more concerned with artificial intelligence.” 

Shiro scrolls past more detailed breakdowns of the arm’s parts until his eyes catch on words like graft and neural connections. He lowers down the tablet. 

This is not a Jaeger arm. 

Shiro swallows carefully. “Is this—”

“It is.  It is experimental of course, but I am confident that the technology could cover a broad array of human applications.I had never truly thought of all the potential applications of this new technology. We could help so many people. Altea has built giant robots meant for war. We could also build things for good. Organs or even limbs, ” Allura says, her voice eager. “ I have updated Altea's software to fit your neural profile. It will be just like piloting a Jaeger, only the Jaeger would be attached to your own body.”

His ears buzz as he realizes what she is proposing. Allura continues talking, but her words arrive faint, almost abstract to his brain. “The procedure would be heavy and require intense physical therapy,” Allura continues. “It will not be easy but if it succeeds, it could restore all of your potential.” A familiar glint of fire sparks in Allura’s eyes, making her whole face light up. It was the first he'd noticed about here when they'd met. He’d never quite realized it wasn’t there anymore. Shiro wonders when, why, it faded from her eyes. “This is my gift to you. Shiro, it is yours.”

It had been her fire that had first attracted him to her. He'd felt then that he could have followed her anywhere. B ut this— 

“I can't,” Shiro breathes out. “I'm sorry, I can't.” 

It hurts to watch the spark dim in Allura’s eyes and knowing that this time it’s is because of him. 

“I understand that this is a difficult decision,” Allura says, her voice tentative. “There are risks—Of course, the procedure would be unique. No, it would be groundbreaking. Please take the time you need to think it over. I am happy to talk over the finer details. Of course, you should think carefully over it, seek advice and—” She hesitates and on her face, he can read what she's going to say. He takes a step back, his hand reaching to clutch at the bunched fabric of his shirt, tied tightly into a knot an inch below the stump of his right arm. “Perhaps if you reached out, Keith would—” 

He knew. He knew that it's what she was going to say. It does nothing to prepare him for the wash of anger, anguish and  _ shame _ that crawls up his spine.

“No.”

The single word he manages to get out comes out raw and angry because it's easier to focus on the anger than on the rest of his mangled feelings. 

He hasn't. Of course, he hasn't. What is there to say?”

“It has been months. Surely—“

“He left _,_ Allura,” Shiro snaps. “He left!”

_ He left me, _ Shiro bites back. There's nothing else to say because Shiro remembers waking up, missing a copilot and a limb. The pain had been so overwhelming then, that he'd not understood immediately that he'd been missing a friend too, who'd requested a transfer and left without a word while Shiro was still bleeding out on a metal slab.

“Shiro,” Allura tries again. “Please, I am worried about you—” 

“Sorry to interrupt,” a voice cuts in hesitantly behind them.

Shiro steps away smoothly from Allura. And when he turns, the smile on his face is ready.

“Curtis,” Shiro says. “Please, you're not interrupting.”

Curtis steps forward hesitantly. “I brought the files you asked for,” he says and pushes a stack of paper into his arm.

“Thank you,” Shiro mutters and fumbles with them, balancing them on his tablet.

“Also, I brought you some coffee. You look like you could some,” Curtis says and hands him a cup. The aroma of the steaming coffee wafts thickly in the air between them. It's a nice gesture and Shiro gives Curtis a small smile while he waits for him to realize that his hand is already too full. He does too late, red flooding his cheeks as Allura steps up and gently takes the cup out of Curtis' hand. “Thank you, Ensign.”

Curtis flushes. “It's Lieutenant, now.”

“Of course,” Allura smiles, the edge of it colder than ice. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

She stares him down. There's no other way to describe it. Curtis flinches and slowly takes a step back. 

“I'll see around, Shiro,” Curtis says and throws him a last, small smile as he moves away. 

“You don't need to be so hostile,” Shiro says when they're alone again. “He's been a good friend.”

Allura sets the mug down on Shiro's worktable.

“You are my friend and I love you dearly,” she says as she delivers him from the stack of papers, smoothing out their ruffled edges. “But you are making a terrible mistake.”

He laughs, bitter and ugly. “You mean a worse mistake than the one I made six months ago?”

“You have endured more than any man should ever endure and lost more than most,” Allura continues, unfazed, and when she speaks again, all the softness is gone from her voice. “But you still have much to fight for. Remember this, or it will be too late: you will wake up one day and find that things are even worse than you think they are now.” She squeezes his hand, warm and soft, a sharp contrast to the steeliness of her eyes. “Please think about my offer.” 

 

  
  


 

  
  


The routine of his new life is well-oiled by now. He trains the cadets in the mornings. Then he assists the Commanders—anything they need, reading reports, mindless representation, odd jobs they feel too important to accomplish themselves. It's often not much, but today he can't bear to make his way to their offices. Halfway there, his feet change course and lead him to Adam.

Well. Not really. 

Adam’s body is buried in suburban Ohio where he grew up, among cornfields and emptiness, away from any ocean. He's been repatriated to his parents quickly, without a fuss, while Shiro was still delirious with pain and barely conscious. The burial was a quiet, private affair. Gone are the days where Jaeger pilots deserved national honors. Now they're dying too regularly to warrant the government spending. Among family and friends, Iverson was the single representative of the shatterdome. 

When Shiro was able to stand up on his own, Iverson came to him and told him that Adam had been laid down to rest below a large, beautiful birch. In peace for all eternity. 

A fucking birch. Adam would have liked the irony. He used to be deathly allergic to them. 

Adam's proper grave is thousand miles away, but the shatterdome has mounted a small plaque next to the all-purpose religion center. The breach had polarized religion even more than centuries of war and secularization ever did. Hard to believe in God when the Earth core spouted giant monsters on a regular basis. But those who believed did so even more desperately. Hard not to believe in the apocalypse when it was literally there. 

The religion center first started out as a Christian chapel, but it grew alongside the shatterdome: first to accommodate the other major religions—Islam and Judaism mostly—but then it morphed beyond tradition, small shrines dedicated to cults and absurd idols. Godzilla had a strong following in the shatterdome—it made sense. Giant monster against giant monster. That would be a useful God to have on their sides. 

Shiro has never thought much about the salvation of his eternal soul, but he’s grateful for the quiet space, allowing for reflection and meditation in the hive-like shatterdome, and for the simple memorial for his fallen comrades. 

Privately, Shiro thinks that Adam would have liked this better. Standing among his fallen comrades. Being honored where he used to fight. Forever guarding the coast, rather than sneezing the eternity away below a birch. Shiro lets his fingers brush against the smooth bronze, tracing Adam’s name and bows down to rest his forehead against it, wishing he could imprint Adam's name into his skin and hoping somehow that it could assuage the guilt churning like acid in his gut. 

He misses him. He misses his wit and his drive, but over the months, the sharp pain has turned into a dull ache. He misses many things like this: his parents, his old life at Berkeley, and now Adam. He knows the will never quite fade and he’s ready to carry it with him, but it has dulled. 

It’s not Adam that he dreams about. It’s not Adam he reaches out for blearily when he wakes up. It’s not Adam he misses like he misses his right arm. 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro breathes out.

The pain has dulled, but the guilt—the guilt he almost can’t bear. 

He lingers there for hours, crouched in front of Adam's name. People come and go around him, but they do not approach him. The open admiration from his active duty days has faded into quiet reverence. He calls it that. It's easier to accept than acknowledging the pity and the fear. He could make it all disappear if he took Allura's offer. 

“What would you have me do?” he whispers and lays his palm over Adam's name. “You were always the smart one. What should I do?”

He barely remembers Adam's voice. Even now, his mind is blank with it. 

His good hand comes up to clutch his stump. He wants all of it back. 

“I'm sorry,” Shiro whispers one last time and leaves.

  
  


  
  


  
  


Laughter spill out of the rec room and he pauses, one hand on the handle, and allows himself a deep breath before he pushes the door. The scene doesn't register immediately: the low buzz of excited conversations, the haphazard half-circle of cushions and blankets on the floor, the stainless steel water bottles being passed around for careful sips. He freezes as he finally sees the two cadets painstakingly affixing a white sheet to the wall.

A party, Allura had said. But this is not just a party. It's karaoke night.

He glances back at the door over his shoulder. It's not too late. He can make it and make his excuses to Allura. She would understand. She would be hurt, but she would—

“Shiro!” he hears and then Lance is standing upright on the couch that thrones in the center of the rec room, waving widely at him. Heads swivel in unison, and then it's just a dissonant chorus as the newest batch of the shatterdome's active Jaeger pilots call his name. Hunk and Pidge. Lance and his sister.

Too late.

An empty spot miraculously appears on the couch between Lance and Hunk as he forces himself to move towards his friends. It's prime real estate: right in front of the makeshift screen. He keeps a wide berth away from it and commandeers a chair instead, pulling it up close to the couch. Lance complains instantly and even Pidge pauses in her installation of an ancient-looking projector to yell at him.

“Active pilots only,” he says and ignores them all. Somehow, his voice doesn't shake even if tonight is karaoke night, or what the rest of the world knows as the trial runs of the Tokyo shatterdome.

Karaoke night started out pretty innocently. Iverson requested that the newly-minted pilots of Galaxy Atlas and Survivor Altea to follow up on the competition, which meant keeping up with the Jaegers of the other shatterdomes. Some were easy: Anchorage and Sidney were natural born allies. Knowledge, technology, and labor transfers were frequent between them. Some they mostly ignored: Lima and Hong Kong. Too young and too small to really bother. Some were their priority: Vladivostok. The Russian shatterdome was so well spied upon that it almost felt like home.

The only problem was Tokyo.

No-one knew shit about Tokyo.

So, once a month, Iverson had required that they sit through the night to watch the shaky feeds of the training runs of the Japanese toy Jaeger. They'd all dreaded the impossibly boring evenings when they were all beyond tired and overworked. Seventeen hours—that was the time difference between LA and Tokyo and they'd all hated every one of them. It had been torture to watch the clunky steps of what looked like a gundam-looking animatronics while they could have been sleeping. Pointless. Futile. Until Adam had commented on the Jaeger's appalling performance and Lotor had agreed, arguing that it could jerk off the Tokyo tower better than dance a simple hula. That's all it had taken for the whole purpose of the night to change. From then, they'd all gathered once a month to let loose, jeer at their peers, curse at the world, and relax among friends.

But nothing stayed a secret in the shatterdome. Every month, cadets and techies, more and more joined until the room got crowded and people started carrying in cushions and blankets to sit on the floor, bringing food and smuggling in booze. Within a quarter, someone thought to stop the mind-numbing commentary of journalists and put music instead: hits from the past only. Any genre was fair game—disco, K-pop, electro—as long as it had catchy lyrics and a good beat.

That's how karaoke night was born, because it was hilarious to watch two unseen pilots try to find the beat and duet in the clunkiest, most action-figuresque Jaeger ever designed by man. Even the Russians had better taste. It was plain-old fun, the kind of fun they all thought they'd truly forsaken as the first Kaiju made landfall and at the center of it was always a single couch—musty and faded with time. Always empty until the pilots arrived to take their thrones.

_ Active pilots only. _

Adam made up that rule once upon a time. Shiro won't be the one to break it. 

“Hey, man, you ok?” Hunk asks just as the crowd erupts in loud woos and aahs as Pidge finally manages the connection between the projector and her tablet using homemade cables, and the live-feed of a worldwide news channel appears on the homemade screen.

“I'm good,” Shiro says as the the sight of the closed massive hangar doors of the Tokyo shatterdome. His breathing goes a bit shallow.

He's had many reasons to avoid karaoke night.

It hasn't started yet. On the screen, a woman in an ill-fitting suit is rambling about the upcoming run. Her thin mouth moves without sounds as the music is already pumping loud in the rec room. Something about a dancing queen that he doesn't recognize. But Allura is not here.  But Allura is not here—it's not too late. He can still make his excuses. 

As if summoned by the single thought of her name, Lance appears in front of him and pushes a bottle into Shiro's hands. “Allura is stuck in debriefings. Give her some time, she'll come by and then the real party can start.”

Shiro nods and considers the bottle. Gingerly, he takes a swig and gags. It tastes more like fuel than the alcohol it's supposed to imitate. Gin maybe. It's awful. He takes another swig. 

Beside him, Hunk clears his throat. “I heard that Allura showed you her plans for your—you know?” Hunk trails off and gestures vaguely at Shiro's entire right side.

“You knew?”

“I may have given some input,” Hunk says. “It's amazing tech, really. Have you scheduled the graft already?”

Shiro grunts and takes another sip of whatever's vile liquid Lance has pushed into his hand. It gives him a moment to gather his thoughts, but the words end up too heavy on Shiro's tongue. He swallows them back down with another sip before he pushes the flask into Hunk's hand. “How's your drift?”

Hunk's face opens and blooms as he glances back at Pidge, who's forced her way next to him. He throws an arm around her shoulders and she rolls her eyes at him, pushing away but laughing to continue her conversation with Veronica. Their connection is impossible to ignore. Nothing forced. Nothing artificial. 

“It's good,” Hunk says to him, through a smile. “It's the easiest thing in the world, you know?”

“Yeah,” Shiro lies, eyes fixed on the badly-dressed journalist who's still rambling on. He doesn't know who he's lying to. Hunk, probably, because it's never been easy. It's taken everything out of him to hold the connection with anyone, even with Adam. Perhaps it's the lie he means to say. Or perhaps. Perhaps, it's not Hunk he's lying to. Perhaps, he's lying to himself, because it's been easy once, easier than anything when he'd followed Keith's lead in moving Atlas across the LA bay.

“Guys! It's starting!”

On the improvised screen, the pixelated image of the news reporter is replaced by the shaky image of the Tokyo shatterdome. The doors open up sluggishly, inch by inch, in sharp contrast with the happy beat chosen by some cadet, something about the last dance and tonight. It's a good song, one that everyone knows apparently because most of the cadets are singing along, while the opening doors slowly, inexorably reveal the sharp lines of a Jaeger that is the farthest thing away from the Japanese Mark-I they've been laughing at for months.

Pidge whistles low. “The Mark-IV. I didn't know she was ready.”

“What a beauty,” Hunk whispers, and he's right. It is beautiful, all sharp lines, sleek and almost athletic-looking. Entirely black except for two yellow eyes. But then the feed switches to another camera and under the afternoon sun makes the Jaeger shines almost blue, bright and fair for an instant, then deeper, like the shifting colors of lagoon waters. Like spills of Kaiju blue.

“That's serious competition for Altea,” Veronica says, jabbing an elbow into Lance's side.

The return jab is instantaneous. “Oi! Allura's Jaegers are the best!” 

“Why are they taking her out now?” Pidge mutters, eyes glued to the screen. “I thought this was just a trial run.”

In the background, the music has changed. It's loud and fast as the Jaeger takes its first steps in the Tokyo bay. It's also the only sound left as the Jaeger begins its forms.

It's seamless. Tons of steel and metal alloys falling into perfect movements, better than some of the cadets he oversees in the morning manage with their own body. It's seamless, it's perfect, like fate and nature, steel and water—

Someone cuts the music and puts back the commentary before the song can end.

“Who's piloting her?” Hunk breathes out.

“It has to be Thace and Antok,” Pidge says. “They have the best drift of the shatterdome.”

“No,” Shiro rasps. “It's not them.”

Because the oldest pair of Jaeger pilots still in active duty couldn't make her move like that. Like water and quicksilver and steel.

“What the—” comes Lance's aborted curse as the faces of the pilots appear across the screen. It's probably highly classified information, but every bit of info tends to leak these days. Lance surges to his feet. “No way! I call fake news!”

On the screen, the footage of the Jaeger run has been replaced by two official-looking photos. A woman's face to the left. Shiro barely sees it, his eyes drawn to the other picture where Keith's face stares right back at him. It's a new picture. His hair is longer, curling almost to his shoulders, and there are deep circles under his eyes. The uniform is new too: dark blue and purple, nothing like the grey and orange of the LA shatterdome. But it's Keith. Tokyo's new Jaeger pilot.

“Excuse me,” he says among the excited shouts and shocked gasps. Maybe he doesn't say it loud enough, or maybe no-one cares, because no-one stops him as he leaves the rec room, only to bump straight into Allura.

He must not quite manage to school his features. Her face goes white with shock. 

“Did you know?” Shiro hisses. “Is that why—did you know?”

“I am sorry” she stutters and her hand comes up to his forearm. “Shiro, what happened?”

He wrenches himself away from her. Maybe she calls after him. He doesn't look back.

  
  


  
  


  
  


In the darkness of his own room, he watches the live-feed recycle the images of the run over and over again until the battery of the datapad runs out and he's left in the relative darkness of his room. Next to his head, pinned to his wall, the star chart is glowing faintly, warmed by a day's worth of artificial light. His eyes search for the small dot that they'd labelled Kerberos even though they knew it was not quite at the right place. Once upon a time, NASA was planning on sending the first manned mission there. That was long before the Pacific Ocean split in two. Shiro had dreamed then: to be chosen and to walk among the stars.

It feels like those dreams belong to someone else now.

He stares at Kerberos' faint light, but the dot becomes blurry quickly and Shiro turns away, burying his face against his arm.

Somehow, he'd thought that it would be temporary. Perhaps not his arm. Perhaps not his grief and guilt over Adam. But Keith. Somehow he had thought that Keith would come back.

He thought wrong.

Keith won't come back. Why would he? Not when all that Keith had here was a toy star chart pinned to the wall and a friend who betrayed his trust in the drift. Not when he's left both behind. It won't be temporary. 

Now he knows that Keith has moved on. He wears a different uniform and pilots the most advanced Jaeger of the Pan-Pacific coalition. Why would he come back to the West coast? After all, he's left it without looking back. 

No. This is not temporary. This is meant to last.

It's funny. He's had ample time to reflect on their drift. He's parsed through everything Keith gave him and on what he took forcefully. He's contemplated Keith's feelings and his own. 

He'd assumed that if he ever were to return Keith's feelings, he would know it in an explosion: violent, all-encompassing, absolutely irrefutable. After all, his relationship with Keith has always been that. Overwhelming awe when seeing him in that alley for the first time. Scorching pride when reading his simulations score. Unwavering devotion for all the rest. But he'd felt nothing, no glitch in what he felt but for the churning panic following that first drift, and after that nothing but bone-deep loss. His feelings have not changed. Simply because they didn't have to. 

They've never changed, he realizes now, because he's been in love with Keith for a long time. 

Funny. 

He's changed right from the start, but he's been so focused on maintaining his own connection with Adam that he's never quite realized. 

He's never realized what he'd missed. 

Yeah. Funny. 

  
  


  
  


  
  


The Japanese shatterdome makes the announcement the next day with uncharacteristic decisiveness. Shiro reads the memo woodenly in the mess hall. He's by far not the only one: the excited gasps and discusses buzz loudly around him although the memo is dry and to the fact. 

Antok and Thace's old, indestructible Mark-III is retired to the second defense effective immediately, the memo reads. The Mark-IV, all sleek lines and Kaiju blue panes, replaces it as the first attack team of the Archipelago with a new pair of pilots. There are no pictures, no short bios, and motivational quotes as the American shatterdomes would have done. There’s just a name, followed by a new rank. 

Keith Kogane, Ranger.

No fuss. No show. Just a few words that make it official: Keith is not coming back.

The call name of the new Jaeger is Cosmo Blade.

It's a good name, even Shiro can admit to that.

He closes the memo and pulls up the last message from Allura. He goes through the design of the prosthetic for a long time, thinking about what he should write. 

Keith has moved on. Perhaps the only thing to do is just to accept it and try to do the same. 

For the first time since Sendak, Adam's voice rings clear in Shiro's thoughts. _We're rangers._ _We fight._

He ends up with two simple words:  _ I'm in. _

  
  


  
  


  
  


They schedule the procedure for the day following Allura's birthday. It's convenient. She would have been forced to leave her work at Altea and spend some time at the shatterdome anyway because Lance has planned a party for her. 

One does not skip Lance's parties.

He frowns as the elevator delivers him into a dank, dark hallway. Allura had warned him about the recent change of location, but this can't be right. He should have brought his datapad with him to check the room number. 

_This can't be right,_ he thinks as he pushes the door of the room at the very end of the hallway. This is not an operating room. This is Slav's experimental lab that's been left to rot away for months because his position as researcher of Kaiju biology has not been offered to another candidate and the funds have been quietly reallocated to the defense spending. The months of inactivity show. The smell is heavy and sour, like something is slowly decaying in some forgotten corner. Half of the lights are busted, enough to illuminate the work tables littered with dust and broken down equipment. But among the mess, heavy plastic sheets have been drawn to form a tent-like structure. They shine almost blue under the intense spots set up around the lonely operating table.

Allura is standing in front of it in deep discussions with a man Shiro only recognizes from pictures. He looks up as the door clicks shut behind him. 

“Captain Shirogane!” he cries out and hones on him to engulf his hand into a hearty handshake. 

The man is formidable-looking: dressed impeccably in a three piece suit, complete with a pocket watch and a neat handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. Still, his outfit is nothing compared to his facial hair. The mustache alone, all oiled swirls and dramatic curls. Truly impressive. 

“My name is Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe,” he introduces himself. “Altea's Chief Biomedical Officer. It's an honor to finally formally meet you, Captain.” 

“Please call me Shiro,” he says faintly and carefully extirpates his hand from Coran's grip just as Allura comes up to hug him. 

“I am sorry about the change of venue,” Allura says when they part. “The Admiral denied us access to the medical bay after consultation with her legal staff. If we use their facilities, then the procedure becomes official. And official renders the garrison liable.”

Shiro's eyes linger on the dirt and decaying alien parts left into half-empty tanks. He used to  _ hate  _ Slav. He could barely stand to be in his presence while he rambled on parallel universes and an earth where the breach may have never have formed. He'd never seen the point. The breach had formed. It was their home under assault. The rest was inconsequential.

Allura misinterprets his silence. “Of course, I should have insisted. I will talk to the Admiral at once and demand proper facilities for your operation.”

“It's fine.” He drags a finger in the thick dirt layer of the surrounding tables. He's going to be cut open and reconstructed among assorted Kaiju parts because of _insurance concerns._ His life used to matter. The irony of it—it'd almost make him laugh. Adam under a birch. Him lying among the echos of Slav's mad ramblings. It's fitting. He's worth the same to the garrison now, dead or alive. A liability, to be deleveraged and ignored. 

“Let's do this,” Shiro says and goes straight for the cold slab of metal. 

  
  


  
  


  
  


Shiro tenses, when after what seemed hours of preparations, Allura finally fits the mask over his mouth. She smiles at him and lays a hand against his head. “All will be well.”

That's such a ridiculous thing to say. Of course it won't be. It hasn't been for a long time. Still, he can appreciate the sentiment and he returns her smile. 

“I will be here when you wake up,” he hears just as he slips into unconsciousness and stirs again after what feels like a second. He doesn't quite manage to move, his limbs stiff with inactivity. His body feels warm, too heavy, but slowly he registers a pressure on his left hand that pulls at his attention. He glances sideways. It clicks after a few slow breaths: the pressure on his hand explained by Keith's deadly grip.

He looks terrible, skin wan and hair unkempt. Deep circles under his eyes draw his features down, making him look years older than he truly is, but his mouth moves with Shiro's name, again and again. He's the most welcome sight Shiro has seen in months, even if there are tears in his eyes and he folds on himself, pressing his forehead to their joined hands.

“It's all my fault,” his voices echoes as if it came from another room, but Shiro still hears it crack. “Shiro, I'm so sorry. It's all my fault.”

_ Why are you apologizing?  _ He tries to say but  his mouth is not working. His tongue remains stuck to the roof of his mouth, dry and sluggish. He tries to reach for Keith instead, but his right hand doesn't respond. Worse, his right hand—his right hand isn't there. 

Huh. 

That's new. He'll deal with that later, once Keith is not making broken wet sounds against him. 

“I'm sorry,” Keith whines and he surges against him, pressing his forehead against Shiro's for an instant, puffy breaths warm across Shiro's face. “It will be better that way—I'm sorry.”

Shiro registers just a flash of red as Keith moves away from him, his figure disappearing from his blurry vision.  _ No, don't go,  _ he tries to say, but all that comes out is a groan. He tries again.  _ Keith, please.  _ And when he tries again, he manages a louder groan and finally a figure reappears in front of his eyes, a hand suddenly warm against his cheek.

“Welcome back,” Allura says. The plastic sheets, shining almost blue under the neon lights give her a halo. She smiles and Shiro blinks up at her, helplessly. “The graft was a resounding success.”

_ What graft?  _ i s what pops in Shiro's mind, but he has to smile back, because there's nothing else to do when Allura smiles at you. The warmth, the benevolence and beauty. It's almost unbearable sometimes.

“Awesome,” Shiro slurs and tries to push himself to sit. 

“Please take it slow,” Allura says and the gentle pressure of her hand is enough for Shiro to sink back against the hard surface. “Is there any pain?”

Shiro shakes his head. “Where did Keith go?”

There's a pause. Allura brushes his hair away from his eyes. “Rest now.”

Shiro shakes his head again. “Will you tell Keith to come back? I have to talk to him. I have to—” 

Allura shushes him, her fingers soothing the frown across his forehead with slow swipes of her thumb. “Close your eyes. The anesthesia will dissipate very soon.”

When he stirs again, his mind is clear. His new, functional arm responds seamlessly as he brings his right hand in front of his eyes, and flexes his fingers. Metal fingers, smooth and white as ivory. It trembles slightly as he pushes himself to a seating position, but it doesn't give away under his weight.

Allura hovers uncertainly at his side. Her hand is warm against his lower back as she helps him support his weight. “Slowly. Take your time.”

He has a new, functional arm. That's what he has. He tilts towards Allura, burying his face against her neck, and her arms come around his shoulders immediately.

“Sorry, I—” he says and he wraps his arms— _both of his arms_ —around her. “Thank you.” 

  
  


  
  


  
  


His routine changes.

In the mornings, he still trains the cadets, but in the afternoons, he deserts the commanders' offices and trains for himself. He learns to use his limbs again until the unfamiliar weight of his prosthetic becomes an afterthought. Selection week is coming up, and the two pairs of hopeful candidates are growing restless with anticipation. They're cocky even, assured of their position in the shatterdome. One day, Shiro challenges them all individually first thing in the morning. He makes quick work of them, and it feels _good_ —the sound of their bodies hitting the mat almost like music to his ears. The next day, he challenges them in pairs, and it's harder. He's sweating hard by the time he manages to send them to the mat, and manage it he does. They forget to be cocky after that. And Shiro finds himself wanting to teach them. They will drift and pilot Jaegers, that has not changed, but now Shiro wants them to _survive_. He trains them harder, longer in the mornings. In the afternoons, he keeps pushing his own body until he deadlifts twice as his previous record without blinking and the cadet, who had tripped over himself to spot for him, is so dumbstruck that Shiro understands he's overdoing it. 

After that, he runs, pounding miles and miles away along the California's coastline and looking out at the emptiness of the Pacific Ocean. Trade routes have broken down over the years. Maritime traffic has dwindled down to almost nothing in the Pacific. The trails are also deserted. He runs into more rabbits, deers, and coyotes than humans most afternoons. The humans hide. He sees only traces of their activity: Tents. Pits. Trash. 

These daily signs of poverty push him to hitch a ride to downtown LA one afternoon and he wanders around the neighborhood a bit lost. This can't be the place. It looks better than he remembers, like new money has been poured into it. The houses on this block look different too. Across all of them, the paint looks fresh: a bright baby blue. 

“Ranger?” 

Shiro whirls around and she's doesn't have her bat. But even with her arms full of groceries as she comes up the empty sidewalk, he recognizes her. 

“I was—” He licks his lips. “I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help?” 

Romelle beams at him. Wordlessly, he carries the groceries for her as she ushers him inside her home. 

After that, his afternoons are even busier than in mornings. Often, he makes his way back to his quarters way past sundown, way past curfew but there's no-one to berate him. Even if a Kaiju were to come through the breach, no-one would come looking for him.

He's right. 

No-one comes looking for him when the breach dilates for the third time since Sendak. As a Captain, he's earned a place in LOCCENT to give counsel to the main command. He's a voice among many and so  easy too ignore when Sanda is calling all the shots. He'd sworn himself he would never show. What would be the point of his presence really. There's nothing he can do. Listen, when he used to speak. Wait, when he used to act. 

He dismisses his resolution easily. Now he's grateful for the opportunity to watch. To know.

No-one stops him as he takes a place as a backbencher in LOCCENT while the alarms blare with the impeding Kaiju emergence.

“Surface break,” Matt calls as the CAT-III (Codename: Hepta) emerges in the middle of the ocean. “Calibrating course.”

Silence falls in LOCCENT. Shiro tries to imagine the command centers of the other shatterdomes, men and women he doesn't know watching the screens with the same breathlessness, while they wait for their fate to be decided. It is the only moment when the shatterdomes are truly equal, uncertainty ruling them all while they wait for the forecast of the Kaiju's target. 

Countless attempts have been made to predict Kaiju's appearances and trajectories, but traditional methods have failed them. Too many unknowns. Too few data points. So far, Slav has been the only one to affirm he could make realistic forecasts.  _ Realistic.  _ The brass has quietly shipped him to Russia when they realized what realistic meant for Slav. After all, he's always had many realities in mind and it is easy to make a perfect forecast when realities are infinite.  Shiro was among the ones who quietly supported Slav's removal. He regrets it now, wishing he'd listened to his many, many, alternate selves who would have argued for Slav to stay, as he has to wait for satellite imagery to compile.

West, and his friends and his home are in danger, or east, and—no. No. 

No solid analysis permits to determine the Kaiju's bloodlust. The second-best is to simply rely on luck. And the LA shatterdome has been lucky since the Sendak levied its heavy toll. Two dilations in the breach and the beasts have all turned away from the west coast. Manilla and Sidney. Others have bled while the American continents sighed in relief.

“Well?” Sanda prompts impatiently as Matt's station pings with the incoming results of the calibration.

“East,” Matt says and hushed sighs roll in the room like distant thunder.

Lucky again.

“Pilots, at ease,” Sanda calls almost instantly. “Necessary personnel only from now on. Our job is here done. May the brave folk on the other side of the ocean live through the night.”

And that's it. Her closest advisors come to shake her hand, tension bleeds out of the room. They've been spared from the judgment of the gods. The monster is targeting someone else today, some place far from home.

“Holt, we expect regular updates.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Matt mutters without looking back as if he knows that Sanda is already leaving and half of the command follows. They all file out of the room, exchanging easy banter among themselves, as if they don't know that millions of human lives are still in danger. As if what awaits the other side of the Pacific Ocean is not real.

It's quick. In a couple of seconds, there's only a handful of technicians and analysts left in LOCCENT. As a pilot, he's never realized how detached, how monstrous the officers have become. They've simply adjusted to this new world. It's the new normal. It's  _ routine _ .

“You mind?” Shiro grunts as he sits down next to Matt, painfully aware that he's disregarding protocol, but finding, somehow, that he doesn't care.

Matt does not react. His fingers flying over his keyboard, eyes glued to his screens, where torrents of information scroll down, too fast for Shiro's eyes to follow. 

“What's the ETA?” Shiro asks instead.

“Four hours, give or take,” Matt mutters.

“And the landfall?”

“Too early to tell.” Matt gives him a sideways look. “Here, let me walk you through to it.”

Over the next hours, Matt's soft voice explains the battery of models that map the Kaiju's trajectory and how to interpret the endless information flowing across the screens. Shiro tries his best to follow as Matt talks about deep currents, satellite imagery and deep-reach sonars. He understands some of it. Enough to be able to decipher the readings on Matt's screens. Enough not to be entirely surprised when Matt sits back in his chair and sighs heavily deep into the night.

“Estimated landfall: Tokyo. Vladivostok and Hong Kong, on stand-by. Tokyo shatterdome: responding.”

Shiro swallows. The flow of information does not relent, but it shifts to passivity. Instead of running models and diagnostics,  they comb through the irregular communication from the Tokyo shatterdome and three international channels that puke incessant news reports with little substance. The choppers are already up in the air, even if for now, there's nothing to be seen in the quiet bay. 

Dawn is breaking when they finally receive the communication from the Tokyo shatterdome.

“Cosmo Blade, deploying.”

Whatever Shiro has been holding under leash breaks. He's expected the fear and the bone-deep surge of pride, but he could not have predicted the overwhelming envy, sharp and bitter on the back of his tongue.

“Ready to dance,” Shiro mutters to himself. “ _ Keith _ , come on.”

  
  


  
  


  
  


He stumbles back to his room mid-afternoon, heart pounding with too little sleep and too much coffee, still reeling from Keith's fight—of Keith's  _ victory _ . I nspiring. A perfect fight. Adrenaline pumps heavy in his veins as if he'd fought the Kaiju himself. 

He reaches for his datapad before the door closes behind and his hands shake as he opens the communication app, scrolling down until he finds Keith's name, burrowed deep under months of system updates, automatic report notifications and polite texting with the other officers. He opens up the thread. He feels like he will burst if he says nothing—pride, fear, and exhilaration—he has to say something, but there's been almost a year of silence between them and the datapad has a perfect, cruel memory.

_ Where are you?  _ The months-old message reads.  _ You don't have to hide from me. You're my best friend. Please, I just want to talk. _

That's what he'd typed quietly while Adam slept next to him for one of the last times. Even now, it stays unanswered. It probably always will. As the months passed, it became irreversible, a milestone to indicate the sharp turn in their lives. Anything he could add that that thread would be ridiculous compared to that last desperate one-sided attempt at communication.

_ Congrats! Great kill on that Kaiju! We haven't talked for months but I'm really glad you're not dead! _

Ridiculous.

His head thunks dully against the wall and he closes his eyes to spare himself another staring match with the ceiling. Anything he could write would not be enough. But the idea of saying nothing is much worse. Keith could have died today. If the Kaiju had been faster, stronger, and lucky, Keith could have died and Shiro would have never heard his voice again. 

If he can’t write—

He taps the call button before he can think too much about it and the first tone echoes loudly in his empty room. 

He lets it ring for a long time. Each tone echoes a bit more strident and each pause between them lasts a little longer. The tiny reflection at the bottom of the screen looks back at him more and more anxiously as Keith fails to pick up. He ends the call and sighs, half-ashamed at the wash of relief that descends upon him, and half-overwhelmed by the wash of disappointment.

Of course.

He's an idiot. There's a seventeen-hour time difference between Tokyo and LA. It's the middle of the night there and it's been mere hours since Cosmo Blade's victory over the CAT-III. Keith is probably sleeping, or still caught up in debriefings and medical check-ups, or  _ celebrating _ . It's easy to imagine, Keith, arms around his co-pilot, smiling in the midst of thunderous applause. He's earned it. He's always deserved it.

Of course he's not answering. 

It leaves Shiro with a strange feeling: knowing that Keith will wake up in the morning and see the missed call from someone who used to be his friend, someone who used to be close. He wonders how Keith will react. Probably he'll do nothing. Probably he'll just raise an eyebrow, dismiss it and go on about his day, training, debriefing and fighting for what he's always wanted to fight for. He'll probably just ignore it.

Keith doesn't.

His tablet vibrates in his hand, the notification of an incoming video call blocking the entire screen. Something tightens and breaks in his chest, warmth spilling out throughout his body.

Miraculously, the screen doesn't splinter as he punches the touchscreen to accept the call. 

The image is grainy and slightly lagging. Infrastructure is steadily getting worse. Pooling the world's resources to painfully construct huge metal fighters doesn't leave much room for investment in other areas of the economy. Transportation, energy, communication, all those sectors have been slowly falling into disrepair. But it's enough. Even in the low quality, it's Keith, breathing hard and watching him like he can't quite believe this is happening.

“Shiro,” Keith breathes out and Shiro's thoughts grind to a halt.

He looks well.

Despite the poor connection and the even poorer lightning, he looks healthy and comfortable. The shirt he's wearing seems soft, but it is slightly too big on him, exposing his shoulders and the smooth-looking skin of his upper chest. He looks stronger too, new muscles define sharply the curve of his collarbones. His hair is even longer than in the picture leaked to the media during karaoke night. It curls past his shoulders. It suits him, softening the sharp features of his face. He's—

Shiro tears his gaze away. The background of the feed is all grey and depressing, so similar to the LA dome than it feels like Keith could be next door. But he's not. The bed is unmade behind Keith, a sharp reminder of the time difference between them. When he manages to drag his eyes back to Keith, he realizes that Keith has been staring too, and Shiro is suddenly, painfully aware of the scar running across his nose, the white hair and the harsh new lines of his face.

He hasn't thought this through. He can't. On its own, his thumb moves to end the call.

“Thanks for calling,” Keith says, voice pinched, even though he's the one who's actually calling back, and Shiro flinches, thumb hovering the disconnect button.

“I didn't realize it was so late,” Shiro manages to say. “Sorry—I wasn't thinking. I'll let you rest. You're tired. Of course, you're tired.”

“No—no, it's fine,” Keith interrupts. Too fast. Too loud. “Please—I'm glad you called,” Keith clears his throat, but his eyes are intense. Unblinking.

“You look well,” Keith says and Shiro flinches again, wishing he could cover his face or his hair, but then he'd have to move his prosthetic. He stays still. 

“It suits you,” Keith says, his tone definite, almost defiant, as if he was expecting a rebuke and ready to fight for it. It sounds so much like him, a unique mixture of confidence and defensiveness.

_I missed you so much._ The words clog Shiro's throat, and he has to breathe through his nose to swallow them down.

“I watched you today,” is what he manages. “And well—congratulations. It was an amazing kill.”

A rueful look crosses Keith's face and he rubs the back of his neck. “It was ok I guess. No big deal. Just a CAT-III. We got lucky.”

There's no such thing as just a CAT-III. Fighting a Kaiju—Cat-III or not—is facing impossible odds. Every win is miraculous.

“Don't sell yourself short,” Shiro huffs. “You saved so many lives today and you fought better than anyone Jaeger I've seen in the coalition. You were amazing.”

That particular sequence of words slips out so naturally, because he means them and they've never been so true. But they echo painfully with the last time he's uttered them. In the drift, high on excitement and achievement, a second before he betrayed Keith's trust. It hangs heavy between them, impossible to ignore.

He clears his throat. “Keith, I—”

“Who are you talking to?” a low voice interrupts, a second before a woman enters the frame.

It's her. Keith's copilot.

Of course—he's such an idiot. Of course Keith would be with her now.

The leaked picture wasn't lying. She's beautiful. Perhaps not striking, but handsome in a simple, understated way: symmetric features, even skin and wide lips. But the picture couldn't capture how gracefully she moves as she drapes herself over Keith's shoulders. She's older than Shiro thought. Fine lines at the edge of her eyes and around her mouth betray her even if her hair is still pitch black, curling softly around her ears. Above all, she looks strong. The standard-issue tank top she wears expose the toned muscles of her arms. He wouldn't want to cross her in the ring. She's intimidating physically but it's the steel of her eyes that truly give him pause, because he's not alone in his careful examination: even through the shaky connection, across the physical distance that separates them, her eyes are like a physical pressure on his windpipe. 

“It's nice to meet you, ma'am,” Shiro forces out. “I'm—”

“Takashi Shirogane,” she cuts, bending closer down towards the screen, her eyes flaying him alive. “Yes, I know who you are.”

She pulls back, dismissing him immediately. He's been assessed, and deep in his gut, he knows that he's been found lacking.

“Don't stay up too late. You need your rest,” she says and Shiro watches her leave a kiss against Keith's hair.

So that's what it feels like: a scorching beam slicing through his torso, immobilizing him with pain and envy. Of course, they're close. Shiro knows how the drift makes things easy. He'd fallen into bed with Adam almost immediately, the low-key attraction he'd always felt for him magnified by the neural connection. It's just—with Keith, he'd thought—he sets his jaw. Of course. Foolish to assume.

“I shouldn't have called so late,” Shiro grunts. “I'll let you rest.”

“No, wait!” Keith snaps and the feed becomes a blur as Keith gets to his feet and leaves the room. The images focuses a few second later, Keith's face in sharp contrast against the steel walls of the shatterdome.

“Shiro, I—”

“I'm glad you found someone,” Shiro interrupts, because it is what he needs to say, even if it falls flat—not entirely a lie, but not quite the truth either. “I always knew that you could and that you would be great.” It's all true, but it hurts to articulate the words. Shiro realizes now that he always thought that he would a part of Keith's brilliance, and not some half-broken bystander. “The way your Jaeger moves—truly, it is inspiring. You must have a special bond with your co-pilot to manage it.“

“She's my mom,” Keith blurts out and Shiro stops short.

“Huh?”

Keith looks down. “Krolia. My co-pilot. She's my mother.”

Shiro blinks. “I thought—”

“Yeah, me too.” Keith mutters. “It's a long story.”

It would be easier to let it go, say his goodbyes and let Keith rest. It would be easier, but not good enough. Shiro wants more than easy.  Voice tentative, Shiro says. “Well, I have some time.”

Keith looks up at him, a small, hopeful smile on his face and he starts talking immediately. It'd taken months before Shiro managed to pry a couple of sentences out of Keith's mouth that had nothing to do with the Jaeger program when he first came to the shatterdome.  _ The stars—I wanted to go closer to the stars. Aeronautical studies. I had a scholarship to Berkeley.  _ Shiro had been patient, pushing little by little until he knew more about the teenagers he'd left in the little quaint house of downtown LA, more about his childhood home, lost in the Arizona desert, miles and miles away from any ocean, about his dad, dead long before the first landfall, and surviving, alone, always alone. 

Now the words spill out like a torrent and t here’s something different about Keith’s face as he recounts how his mother found him in the Tokyo shatterdome and shared her story of young love, duty, and separation. How his mother apologized for how long it had taken her to find them, too late for her lover, but not for her son. Perhaps it’s in his mouth, somehow softer, and his jaw, relaxed. He looks at ease and younger. 

He looks happy. 

There’s someone for him now. Always. His mother. 

It hurts. Because he’s never seen Keith like that, young and happy and secure in the knowledge that there's someone that belonged to him. Sharply, he remembers their drift. Despite all his longing, Keith did not harbor any hope that Shiro could ever belong to him that way. Like a mother, like a family. Always. He'd never truly thought of Shiro as someone like that. It hurts, sharp and bright, and Shiro can’t barely breathe through it, fingers tight around his tablet. Forcefully, he pushes it away. 

This is not about him. 

He listens on, nodding and humming, committing every detail that Keith gives him to his memory until the trickle of words slows down to nothing, leaving Keith slack-jawed and heavy-lidded.

“Go to sleep now,” he mutters. 

Keith shakes his head. “It’s okay. I’m not—” The rest of Keith’s words are cut off by another yawn. 

“You need your rest,” Shiro says. “You've done enough for today.”

“We’ll talk again?” Keith slurs. 

“Yes, we’ll talk again,” Shiro says, and somehow his voice doesn’t waver even as Keith smiles through another yawn. 

“I am glad you found her,” he adds just a second before they disconnect. 

“Me too,” Keith says smiling as the connection breaks off, leaving Shiro in the darkness of his room. He grips the tablet tight between both hands, curling over the cold metal. To the four walls of his metal box, like a coward, he says, “I've missed you so much.”

He doesn’t sleep. 

At dusk, he goes up to the shatterdome's roof. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen a thousand times before: light pollution from the shatterdome and the LA agglomeration—a faded golden blur of lights, seeping into the darkness of the ocean. 

He takes a picture. 

_ It hasn't changed much. Still foggy and ugly,  _ he writes under the fuzzy image of the LA bay and sends the bundle before he can second-guess himself.

There are many message waiting for him when he wakes up the next morning. The usual reports and updates on the processes of the shatterdome. But one message stands out. It takes a moment to load, but when it does, the picture is saturated with colors and flares of lights—a blurry mess of silver, and red and blue hugging the sharp delineation of the coast. 

_ It's too bright here,  _ Keith writes.  _ Even if it was ugly, at least we could see the stars in LA. _

Then a few minutes after that first message, there's another. Sharp and to the point.  _ I miss the ugliness.  _

Shiro’s thumb swipes over Keith's words many times before he finds the strength to get up and face the day. 

  
  


  
  


  
  


There's a seventeen-hour time difference between LA and Tokyo, but the thread of communications between them does not run cold again. There are always a few messages waiting for him when he wakes in the morning. In return, he makes sure to leave responses for Keith to find in his version of morning.

It's bordering on pathetic. Shiro is well aware.

He'll fight anyone who tries to take away it from him. 

  
  


  
  


  
  


The earth shakes and Shiro lurches to his feet, rushing for his flight suit before he remembers that he's not a pilot. He hasn't been for more than a year. He stumbles back until the back of his legs hits the edge of his bed. He collapses back unto it, but the earth still shakes and the shatterdome is silent. The lack of Kaiju sirens is glaringly obvious and Shiro's fingers clutch the thin cotton of his bedsheets. Impossible—how could the shatterdome miss the approach of a Kaiju. It’s  impossible —but then the earth stills and Shiro understands. 

Not a Kaiju. An earthquake.

Just an earthquake.

He scoffs and lies back down on his bed, dragging his hand across his eyes. He stares at the ceiling, willing his heart to settle. Blindly, he reaches for his datapad. 

_ I think there was an earthquake just now,  _ he writes.

And for the first time, Keith writes back immediately.  _ You okay? _

Shiro props himself up against the wall. 

_ Fine. It was nothing. Just—I thought it was a Kaiju.  _ He scoffs, written down it sounds even more naive.  _ Anyway. It was dumb. _

He jumps a little as the shrill sound of the incoming call and then a little more as Keith's face appears on the screen, his forehead creased with a frown.

“It's not dumb,” Keith scowls. “There's a separate siren for earthquakes here. Before that, I heard it was always hysteria. Somehow, people have forgotten that nature also tries to destroy cities on a regular basis.”

“Sounds useful,” Shiro mutters. “I'll be sure to submit a proposal to the main command.”

Keith's face comes even closer to the screen. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Shiro shrugs, but somehow Keith’s glare forces more out of him. “It's just—If it’d been a Kaiju, I could have done nothing.” There it is. It’s nothing new and Keith doesn’t seem to understand, brow frowned and he rubs his temples, trying to explain. “I know I haven't been a pilot for months now,” Shiro tries to explain. “I think I never really understood before. There’s nothing I can do if a Kaiju makes landfall.”

There's a pause. Shiro wishes something would disturb the silence, but when he looks up, Keith's eyes are focused on him. 

“You've done enough,” Keith says. “Leave those fuckers to me.”

Shiro chuckles, looking away. “You know I am.” 

“Try to get some more sleep,” Keith says, his tone softer. 

Shiro shrugs. Sleep is a lost cause. “Why sleep when I can catch up on paperwork?”

“Why indeed,” Keith deadpans. “If you're not going to sleep, run some forms with me.” 

“Now?”

“Now,” Keith says and moves away from the screen. He's dressed for exercise and Shiro doesn’t recognize the room he’s standing in. Definitely not his bunk. “Come on. It will help.”

It's not an option. That much is clear. 

It's a bit awkward at first. His room is cramped and the floor hard and cold. Shiro closes his eyes, focusing instead on Keith’s deep voice as he calls the moves. It’s a simple set, one of the first attack sequence he teaches the cadets and Keith chooses a slow, punishing pace, forcing him to think of every muscle, every tendon and move them as efficiently, as perfectly as he can. Shiro lets his body take over and the small inconveniences fade away as he submits to the exercise until all that’s left in his mind is the rhythm of his own breath and Keith’s deep, steady voice. 

It does help, the underlying dread slowly dripping away from his bones, and when the sequence concludes, he feels calm.

He opens his eyes to see Keith crouched in front of his tablet. He breathes out slowly. “Thanks.” 

“Anytime,” Keith says and smiles, warm and real.

  
  


  
  


  
  


Shiro has a plan. Once selection week is over, he'll move up his alarm clock by two hours. His excuse is all prepared—work, anxiety, stress—it's not even a lie. He'll wake up two hours early, and perhaps Keith will indulge him in more runs. Maybe they'll make a habit out of it. Train together. Early for Shiro. Late for Keith. A good compromise. 

If he gives it time, maybe it will help. Heal the rift. 

This is what he's mulling over, day 1 into selection week, as he digs into his lukewarm breakfast and t he Kaiju alarm roars to life in plain daylight only a month after Hepta has been neutralized.

Everyone pauses, sharing uncertain looks, but this is selection week—this is  _ holy _ , but the alarm keeps blaring over their heads.

Not a fluke then.

_It's too soon._ The thought swirls around his head as he makes his way to LOCCENT. The brass is already assembled there. Sanda, Iverson and Sam all stand over their stations in silence. Shiro ignores them and makes his way to Matt's stations. Only Matt is not the one lording over the main consoles. 

Shiro stops short as Curtis turns to look at him, a shy but proud look on his face. “Where's Matt?”

“Lieutenant Holt is no longer with us,” Sanda says behind him. “But we have utter faith in our new coordination officer, don't we, Sam?”

“Of course,” Sam says easily without managing to quite smooth out the tense lines in his jaw. 

“We have movement in the breach. I mean—surface break,” Curtis says before Shiro can pry further. “Calibrating course!”

Shiro moves to Sam’s side. “Where’s Matt?”

“Probably halfway to Russia by now.” Sam grumbles. He looks old, almost frail bent over his station. “He was always too curious for his own good.”

“Russia?” 

“He asked too many questions, and Sanda is not one for tolerance,” Sam tells him low. “She shipped him out as soon as she could.” 

“I don’t understand,” Shiro admits and Sam finally looks up, eyes hard, just as Curtis calls. 

“East!”

They share a heavy look before they turn towards the screens. It’s too early to make a precise forecast of the monster’s target but the projection cone encompasses half of the lands in the Pacific. Hong Kong. Vladivostok.

Tokyo. 

Shiro's heart sinks. 

Lucky again. 

“It seems that the other side of the Pacific has more to atone for than we do,” Sanda says with a satisfied smile. “Pilots, stand down. Engage the usual procedure.”

She turns to leave even as the screens of LOCCENT blink red with warnings as additional diagnostics slowly trickle down from the open comms of the Pan-Pacific Coalition. 

“Admiral, wait,” Sam barks. “Perhaps we should remain vigilant. We have not received the initial report on the Kaiju. This is highly unusual.” 

Sanda’s expression doesn't waver. “Our protocols are designed to face any eventuality, Commander. I have utter faith in them. And so we will follow them. Essential personnel only from now on.” 

“That woman—” Sam hisses as Sanda disappears into the doorway. “Her pride will get us all killed.” 

Three hours—that's how long it takes for the satellite imagery to produce a good estimate of the Kaiju stats and trajectory. 

Codename: Kuron. CAT-IV, but it's a rough classification. It's the largest Kaiju ever recorded. The metrics on speed and water displacement reaching the maximum of the top-coded scale. They'd opened a whole category for Sendak when it happened last. 

But this is beyond any simulation. Simulations had never any theorized that a Kaiju could be that big, that fast. This is not just a CAT-IV. This is death, moving fast and unerring towards its targets. Something grows tight and painful in Shiro's chest as he reads the target of the estimated landfall. 

“Hong-Kong. Vladivostok. Announcing stand-by,” Curtis says hesitantly. 

Sam's hand comes up to rub his eyes for long seconds before he manages to look up at his screens again. By now, they are just a mess of red, blinking warnings as on the main map, a single dot of green light advances towards civilization. The ETA is struggling to keep up with the Kaiju's speed, downward revisions coming up more and more frequently, until another notification in bold letters scrolls down almost unseen in the sea of information.  _TOKYO—EMERGENCY DEPLOYMENT—ALL UNITS._

Sam sits back in his chair heavily. 

“Sam,” Shiro whispers. “What can I do?”

“This is beyond our means. We're too far to help them.” 

This can't be all there's to it. 

_It can't,_ Shiro thinks as he watches the back of Curtis's head. Matt would have had a solution. Matt would have seen it coming. 

_ Matt,  _ he thinks. _Halfway to Russia._

LA is too far, but LA is not the only answer. Curtis yelps as Shiro shoves him away from his station and he take controls of the communications. 

“Please hold. We'll—” the techie that answers the call says mechanically before she takes takes one look at him and swallows the rest of her words. 

“Transfer me to the Marshall,” Shiro orders and she flinches, her fingers hesitates on the keys. “Now!” 

The feed goes black for long, unbearable seconds, before they connect him to the Russian shatterdome's command center. 

“Well, Shirogane, back to the living I see. At least, part of you,” Lotor's eyes hone onto his right arm and his upper lip curls into a thin line. “Allura has been hard at work. Any aftereffects?” 

At his side, Shiro's hand closes into a fist. “Deploy your Jaegers. Tokyo needs your help.” 

“Deploy my Jaegers?” Lotor laughs. “Interesting. Are you under the impression that you can order me around? Why is that? Please enlighten me. You may have been someone once, Wonder Drifter, but no more.” 

“Fuck you, Lotor,” he says, matching his tone. “I'm sorry, is it Marshall now? Well then, fuck you, _Marshall_.”

The smile fades from Lotor's face as Shiro leans closer to the screen. They've never been friends, but they have fought together. Shiro has trusted Altea to guard Altas' back as the last defense of the LA bay. 

He doesn't like Lotor, but he trusts his honor. 

It has to be enough. 

“We're not pilots anymore. Neither of us. But have you forgotten what it's like?” Shiro spits. “This Kaiju is stronger than Sendak, stronger than anything that we've ever faced. Are you going to stand-by while others bleed? Is that who you've become?” 

“How dare you—” 

“It's not too late! You can still help them!” Shiro barks, fist slamming against the desk. “Lotor, do something!”

“I've heard enough,” Lotor sneers and the video feed cuts off abruptly. 

Shiro stumbles back from the station, heart pounding, just as someone switches one of the video feeds to the news channel. It's a beautiful day in Tokyo. The sun makes Cosmo Blade shine in vibrant shades of blue as it stands ready to fight in the bay. 

Allura's words echo loudly in Shiro's ears. 

_You have much to fight for. Remember this, or it will be too late: you will wake up one day and find that things are even worse than you think they are now._

  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...incoming. 
> 
> Jimmy Bibobi.. so stupid. still makes me laugh. 
> 
> Don't hesitate to leave a comment, it really makes my day :3

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry Adam T_T
> 
> Don't hesitate to leave a kudo or a comment, or both :3


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